THE LAW OF SERVICE 



A STUDY IN CHRISTIAN 
ALTRUISM 



BY 

JAMES P. KELLEY 




G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 
27 West Twenty-third Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand 

1894 



N 

* 



Copyright, 1894 

BY 

JAMES P. KELLEY 



Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 

Ubc tftnfcfeerbocfeer f>ress, IRcw ltJorft 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 



TO MY GOOD FRIEND, THE READER. 



Kindly do not assume, if I urge liberal giving of money, 
that I think money will do everything, or can take the 
place of that which is more precious. Do not assume, if 
I speak from the standpoint of liberal orthodoxy, that I 
consider that, in its present form, a finality. Do not 
assume, if I refrain from expounding your favorite views 
and anticipating your criticisms, that I have never heard 
or thought of them. In this little work, the product of a 
busy man's leisure, I have not aimed at completeness. I 
have had neither time nor disposition to qualify and 
amplify, and to minimize the effect of the rule by dwelling 
on the exception. 

In Christianity, as I understand it, I do so positively 
and strongly believe as to think that if we take it seriously 
it will work itself clear. Of course there will be blunder- 
ing and waste ; but better so, a thousand times better, 
than if we are too selfish or too critical or too canny to 
make the experiment. 

Confidently looking forward to the "New Era" of 
Christian Altruism, I should be glad to contribute some- 
what to the dissemination of altruistic views. 

J. P. K. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. Introductory I 

II. The Main Thesis 4 

III. Duty of the Individual ... 8 

IV. Theoretical Teaching of the Church 13 
V. Practical Teaching of the Church . 20 

VI. Our Position Defined . . . .27 

VII. The Felicity of Service . . .30 

VIII. Religious Experience . . . .34 

IX. Theology 38 

X. The Church : Instruction . . .42 

XI. The Church : Inspiration and Aggres- 
sion . . . . . .48 

XII. Clergy and Laity . . . .55 

XIII. Home Training . . . . .61 

XIV. Social Life ...... 68 

XV. Human Brotherhood . . . .75 

XVI. Our Dumb Neighbors . . . . 81 

XVII. Citizenship 88 

XVIII. Business and Industry . . . .94 

XIX. Art 104 

XX. Literature in 

XXI. Education 124 

XXII. The Difference 139 

v 



THE LAW OF SERVICE. 




HIS is a radical book, setting forth uncur- 



* rent views. It is written by one who be- 
lieves that the unique Reformer from whose 
birth we reckon our centuries was and is the 
Saviour of the world ; that our only rational hope 
is in the truth he taught, applied to human 
affairs. It is written because the central truth 
of Christianity is but dimly perceived as yet, 
but feebly taught, but languidly and childishly 
applied to life and institutions. It is written, 
moreover, because of the heart-breaking misery 
of man and beast, so widespread, so unjust, so 
enormous in the aggregate that only by somehow 
ignoring it can a sensitive person endure life 
with equanimity; unpitied misery and unrelieved, 
which cries to heaven against the barbarity of 




I 



INTRODUCTORY. 




I 



2 



SFbe 3Law of Service 



what we are pleased to call Christian civiliza- 
tion ; misery that can be remedied only by 
strenuous and thoughtful exercise of the humane 
spirit of Christianity. Finally it is written 
because the author, however severe in judgment 
of their conduct, yet believes that good men's 
hearts are better than their heads, and that a 
crying need of the time, with all its mental 
energy and activity, is clear thinking about the 
simple matters here discussed. 

It were easy to praise the disciples of the 
Great Reformer for their achievements thus 
far and their activities to-day, for distinguished 
heroism and obscure sainthood ; but these pages 
are not for any whose Christianity is so invirile 
that it must be propitiated before it can be 
criticised. They are for those with faith 
enough and honesty enough to welcome the 
truth, however bluntly spoken and however 
searching. They are for those, too, who stand 
more or less aloof from Christianity as they see 
it misrepresented, but are open-minded and 
reasonable, ready to accept what commends 
itself to their moral judgment. 

The object of the chapters which follow is in 
a simple and straightforward way to get at the 
central teaching of Christ concerning conduct ; 
to make, in the light of that teaching, some 
brief examination and criticism of things as 
they are ; to show by the same light something 
of how they ought to be ; and to consider 



•ffntrofcuctorE 



3 



various important applications and illustrations 
of the law which gives the volume its title — all 
this with more concern for sound thinking, sub- 
stantial truth, and practical use than for logical 
sequence of topics and formal unity of treat- 
ment. The doctrine of the book is important if 
true. 



II. 



THE MAIN THESIS. 

\ \ 7HATEVER else may or may not be taught 
" * in the New Testament, the twofold Law 
of Love is there given as the great command- 
ment of the old dispensation, and enforced by 
the obedience of Christ as of like rank in the 
new ; as authoritative for him and for all his. 
The obligation to love God is stated explicitly 
enough. The command to love our neigh- 
bor, like to the other in its binding force, 
has for its interpretation the lifelong sacrifice 
by which Christ gave for the worlds welfare all 
that he had to give. His whole business on 
earth was to express that perfect love for God's 
creatures which is the obverse of his perfect 
love for God. As if to guard the duty of benefi- 
cence against misapprehension or neglect, he 
not only taught human kindness as in the par- 
able of the Good Samaritan, but in a passage of 
prophecy which might well be in the ritual of 
every church he made the dread decisions of 
the judgment to turn not on doctrine but on 
4 



5 



conduct, not on the moral law in general but on 
the law of beneficence in particular. This is 
the style of his teaching who went about doing 
good. Well might Paul sing the psalm of 
" Charity,'' and John declare that God is 
Love. 

If the Law of Love has such implications and 
such tremendous sanctions, there seems to be 
no escape from the proposition that every man 
ought to do his absolute utmost for the well- 
being of his fellow-creatures. 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. We 
have been taught who is our neighbor. Our 
duty to him is not based upon vicinity, associa- 
tion, artificial relations, but upon the Law of 
Love. His need of help is his all-sufficient 
appeal. To every sentient creature I stand 
related in such wise that I ought to give him 
my interest, my sympathy, my help if possible. 
My obligation is measured by powers and op- 
portunities, by comparison of needs, by the ex- 
pediencies and economies of a generous, impar- 
tial stewardship. The question is, not how 
much of time, strength, money, and spiritual 
force I must divert from the pursuit of my own 
private ends to an outside work of beneficence ; 
but how I shall so order my life and husband 
my resources as to do all that is in my power 
for the common good. Once for all, let us re- 
pudiate the heresy, far more dangerous and per- 
nicious than any alleged vagaries of " higher 



6 



Gbe Xaw of Service 



criticism " or " larger hope,'* that the individual 
may to any least degree live for himself, in 
competition with others. Waiving the question 
whether under the new dispensation we are 
taught to love others better than ourselves, let 
us accept the old commandment. I must love 
my neighbor A. as myself ; I must love B., C, 
and D. as myself. Every man is my neighbor 
— there is no drawing the line. Every sentient 
creature is my neighbor, and makes its legiti- 
mate appeal. Granted the claims of myself 
upon myself ; I am but one among countless 
millions, each with his divinely sanctioned 
claim — millions not only of this age but of all 
the ages to come ; for I am a maker of desti- 
nies. Relatively, my private claim is a vanish- 
ing point. Again, God claims my undivided 
service. It will doubtless be admitted that 
there is no limit here, save the limit of my 
ability. But he that spared not his own son 
but delivered him up for us all, will be content 
with nothing short of our utmost devotion to 
the common good. In comparison with his * 
claim for all, what is my claim for myself ? We 
do not question here the inestimable importance 
of the individual atom ; we but compare the 
atom with the mass. The whole question of 
conflicting or competing claims, however, is 
taken out of court by the simple consideration 
that in doing his utmost for others one does ex- 
actly the utmost for himself. The glorious 



XTbe /Ifoaln Gbeste 



7 



paradox, He that loseth his life shall find it, is 
an axiom of Christianity. 

In the Republic of God there is no question 
of conflicting rights ; Right is supreme. No 
question of conflicting claims ; God is one. No 
question of conflicting interests ; the interest of 
all is the interest of each. The gospel of com- 
petition is not the gospel of Christ. The Law 
of Love is a Law of Utmost Service, and the Law 
of Service is the working rule of life. 




III. 

DUTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 

IV] ONE but a perfect intelligence could so 
grasp the conditions and reason upon the 
facts of a given life as to point out in detail the 
way of its greatest possible usefulness. We may 
not hope to attain the ideal in the economy of 
service. If we would be loyal servants we 
must, according to our intelligence and capacity, 
apply the principles of business, the art of bring- 
ing things to pass, to our one all-inclusive busi- 
ness of service. The mediaeval saint, in theory, 
gave up all. He denied himself, abased him- 
self, afflicted himself, isolated himself. The 
modern prelate inhabits an episcopal palace, 
and is conversant with the luxuries and festivi- 
ties of Vanity Fair. The early disciple wor- 
shipped in an upper chamber, or sought refuge 
in caves of the earth ; the modern pewholder 
listens to the service in a temple almost too fine 
for a poor man to enter. John the Baptist 
wore a leathern girdle about his loins, and his 
meat was locusts and wild honey ; the modern 

8 



2>ut£ of tbe 1fnDlv>i&ual 



reformer fares sumptuously every day, and may 
consume the labor of a hundred men to keep 
up the splendor of his private establishment. 
We may not justly say that a man's usefulness 
is proportioned to his poverty, his self-neglect, 
his ignorance, his misery. Not even because 
the chief of all servants had not where to lay 
his head and died a martyr may we affirm that 
the mediaeval way was wholly right and the 
modern wholly wrong. Such conclusions are 
easily reached, but they are worthless. 

Could the monk do the most good in squalor 
and loneliness ? Can the rich philanthropist, 
absorbing into himself the strength of a hundred 
men, get a better sum-total of results by his own 
efforts than by directly utilizing their power 
along with his in productive and helpful activi- 
ties ? These are the important questions, and 
they may not be dismissed with a one-sided 
generalization. Questions generically the same 
must press upon every thoughtful and earnest 
lover of mankind, demanding for their right 
answer not only sincerity, spirituality, and de- 
votion, but a clear head and an active brain. 

How shall I order my life ? I must first under- 
stand and accept the Law of Utmost Service. 
Then to every question of giving or withhold- 
ing, of ambition or renunciation, ease or hard- 
ship, work or play, war or peace, contemplation 
or action, of beauty or ugliness, poetry or prose, 
knowledge or ignorance, of art, literature, 



10 



Zhc 3Law of Service 



society, politics, commerce — to every question I 
must bring that law. If by withholding I may 
do more good than by giving, no sentiment must 
prevent my saying no. If by giving I may serve 
more effectively, I must give at whatever cost. 
If my greatest usefulness, if the greatest ulti- 
mate advancement of well-being demands that 
the four quarters of the globe be laid under con- 
tribution for my culture, my comfort, my amuse- 
ment even, I must needs enforce the claim at 
whatever cost to the productive power of man- 
kind. A man may believe that the issues of life 
are too serious to admit of his enjoying its 
luxuries, or even its comforts ; that literature is 
demoralizing, art is frivolous, and beauty a 
snare ; that to gratify the natural appetites and 
desires is a profanation. The mediaeval ideal is 
the ideal for him. Let him give up all — he can 
do no other. Another man may say, " What 
fools these mortals be ! " He may believe that 
the kingdom of heaven is to come largely 
through " the influence of Jesus upon the intel- 
lect " of mankind ; through the application to 
the problems of life of the enlarged common 
sense, the trained reason, the clear intelligence 
of the scholar. He may believe himself a 
chosen instrument to inform the intellect 
through literary production or scholarly research. 
He may feel divinely called to a work which 
cannot be done without books, travel, society, 
aesthetic culture, immunity from ugly annoy- 



2)ut£ of tbc fln&ivttual 



ances, wholesome conditions of living, all those 
costly accessories which seem essential to his 
highest intellectual activity. He must needs be 
trained and cared for like a race-horse or a 
prima donna. For such an one there is no 
choice. Cost what they will, the conditions of 
his highest usefulness must be provided. 
Another believes in civilization and material 
progress as best opening the way for dissemina- 
tion of truth and promotion of the spiritual wel- 
fare of men. In his view, progress in civiliza- 
tion requires that culture which comes from the 
concentration of wealth, and material advance- 
ment is best secured by the vast organization of 
business which goes with individual control of 
enormous means. He feels himself a born cap- 
tain of industry, a born aristocrat ; and he verily 
believes that by the methods of monopoly on the 
one hand and social exclusiveness on the other, 
he may best do his duty to the masses. Such an 
one, also, has no choice. If his theory is right, 
wealth and magnificence are his duty. Another 
believes in " plain living and high thinking." 
To him private magnificence is vulgar, social 
display foolish and empty, luxury enervating. 
He bethinks him of the poverty of Socrates, the 
blithe homeliness of Emerson. He is convinced 
that with temperance and serenity he may do the 
best that is in him at small cost and with small 
ceremony. It is his happy privilege, then, to 
live and to give like a philosopher. 



12 



Gbe £aw of Service 



That the writer's attitude towards these vari- 
ous theories is by no means one of indifference, 
the sequel will show. Just now we are con- 
cerned with the principle to which every decision 
should be referred. Our mission in the world, 
then, is to do the utmost possible good. In de- 
ciding for or against any given course of action, 
we must take into account all its bearings, direct 
and indirect, near and remote, upon the gen- 
eral welfare and work out the problem as best 
we may. Personal preference, in itself alone 
considered, has as much to do with the decision 
as with determining the orbit of a satellite of 
Mars. " Even Christ pleased not himself." 



IV. 



THEORETICAL TEACHING OF THE CHURCH. 

I T may be said that an ideal of complete devo- 
* tion to the salvation of men is nothing new ; 
that such an ideal has been held up from Christ's 
day to this ; that every intelligent Christian accepts 
it and tries to square his life by it. Certainly we are 
not announcing a new discovery. Exactly what 
is claimed for the thesis here advanced is that it 
belongs to the old and open truth, and is the 
plain teaching of Christ. All through the Chris- 
tian centuries, doubtless, complete devotion has 
been preached ; but we must be excused from 
accepting as our standard a devotion which is 
merely the equivalent of religiousness, and is 
consistent with bigotry, with cruelty, with defi- 
ance of the wholesome laws of nature and rea- 
son. The completer the devotion of Philip the 
Second, the worse for the Christian who dared 
think for himself. Devotion to what ? To the 
name of Christ, or to his work ? An ideal of 
complete devotion, moreover, is doubtless ac- 
cepted by intelligent Christians to-day. Never- 
13 



14 



Zhc OLaw of Service 



theless, before we can grant that no more need 
be said, we must find out what that ideal means 
to those who accept it, and what their accept- 
ance of it means for them and for the world. 
Language serves so effectually not only to 
" conceal thought " but to conceal the want of 
it or the perversion of it that we have no right 
to be satisfied with a phrase. We must go be- 
hind phrases to facts. We inquire first, then, 
into the popular teaching of Christianity. The 
writer's observation and impressions will have 
weight with the reader if confirmed by his own. 
Exceptions and qualifications must often be left 
to the reader's intelligence ; it is enough if what 
we affirm is substantially true. 

Public prayer, though it may not be didactic 
in purpose, is an effective means of teaching, 
and should reflect the views of the teacher. In- 
deed if he is very much in earnest, prayer may 
express his real beliefs more truly than any 
formal statements he is capable of making. 
Where a ritual is not used it is interesting to 
notice the preponderance of the pronouns of the 
first person plural. To one accustomed to 
think of Christianity as generous and public- 
spirited, it is not only interesting, but painfully 
so, this assumption of the minister to represent 
and express the corporate egotism of the church. 
Often and often he seems to have forgotten the 
largeness of the world and to be quite unmoved 
by the powerful appeal of its need. The thought 



Gbeoretical Geacbmg of tbe Cburcb 15 



of fairness in letting the public services of the 
church express the breadth of its doctrine seems 
as foreign to his mind as any scruple of good 
taste about this reiterated " We." Quite har- 
monious with the narrow thought and sympathy 
thus advertised is the conspicuous infrequency 
in many pulpits of allusion to civil rulers and 
lawmakers, or even to " our " country and com- 
monwealth. The pronoun is not vindicated by 
relating it to any large substantive. The prayer- 
book, with its noble and fitting recognition of 
the State, is a refreshment by contrast. The 
language of public prayer abounds in religious 
sentiment, even where it does not too broadly 
suggest the sentimental. It might abound in 
poetry, without being therefore Christian or 
philanthropic. Poetry is good, but it is not 
Christianity. Religious sentiment is good, but 
neither is it Christianity. 

But does the sermon, as might perhaps be ex- 
pected, take a broader and more generous view 
of things ? The preaching of to-day is hardly 
doctrinal ; it would doubtless claim to be prac- 
tical. It is, in fact, far too largely, perfunctory 
and sentimental. In need of spiritual enlarge- 
ment through the truth, we are given the old, 
familiar " sermonizing.'* Introduction, "which 
may be skipt "; body of the discourse, " words, 
words, words," in the air ; conclusion, " lame 
and impotent " or respectably commonplace, it 
matters little. Craving the speech of a living 



i6 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



man, we have been given the function of a 
functionary ; of something other than a man, 
be it more or less. If the preacher, imitating 
the popular lecture in its decadence, merely 
strings together a series of anecdotes and illus- 
trations, he may be more entertaining, but less 
respectable. If he be fervid, the chances are 
large that his fervor is that of the narrow- 
minded prayer, or else dwells on the one topic 
of conversion, neglecting the question what we 
are to be converted to, what we are to do in the 
world while awaiting our reward in heaven. 
The exhorter's converts, but scantily furnished 
in doctrine, soon fail in emotion. They fall 
into conventional ways, and expect things to go 
on pretty much as they have done. Expressly 
or by implication, the preacher recognizes some 
high standard of attainment. What that stand- 
ard is, or, if it be perfection, perfection in what, 
it might puzzle the average layman to tell. Is 
it perfect goodness ? But in what does perfect 
goodness consist ? Perfect morality, perhaps, 
and perfect religiousness combined. Perfect 
morality is understood to imply certain absten- 
tions. The scope of its obligation, just what 
acts are immoral and what, if any, are indiffer- 
ent or non-moral, our layman may not know ; 
and he gets all too little help from his public 
teacher. The result is that many actions which 
may be of vital importance in their relation to 
character and welfare are treated as if they were 



Gbeorettcal Geacbtncj of tbe Gburcb 17 



non-moral or indifferent. Persons of middle 
age can recall how preachers of the old school 
used to demolish the citadel of the "Moralist," 
as of a dangerous enemy to the faith. Doubt- 
less in many cases they were fighting a real 
antagonist. Some of their less virile and logical 
successors deal so little with the general conduct 
of life as to suggest the fear of being taken for 
moralists themselves. It is clear to the student 
of history and the observer of human life that 
great religious zeal may co-exist not only with 
neglect of fraternal duty, but with cruel injus- 
tice. Religiousness needs to be mixed with a 
large ingredient of usefulness to keep it whole- 
some. The scripture statement about " pure 
religion and undefiled " deserves a great deal 
more attention than the clergy give it. A high 
degree of religious emotion, again, is so remote 
from the ordinary experience of many well-dis- 
posed church-goers, if not from their ordinary 
capacity, that its phraseology is to them a kind 
of unknown tongue. With a " genius for re- 
ligion " one may luxuriate in religious experi- 
ence as such. So with a genius for poetry one 
may spend his days and nights with the great 
singers. But as most of us must pluck the 
rarest flowers of poesy in the rare moments of 
quickened imagination, so we must live our re- 
ligion in humble ways, and rise to its conscious 
exaltations according as our life has developed 
the capacity, and monotonous hard work ad- 

8 



i8 



Gbe 3Law of Service 



mits of favorable occasions. Genuine filial love 
is not ordinarily rapture. To be filled with the 
Spirit, we may believe, is not always to be con- 
sciously inspired. To begin with trying to be 
rapturous, and let the theory and practice of 
righteousness wait, would seem to be a disastrous 
mistake. 

What has been said of official prayer and of 
preaching applies, perhaps more forcibly, to 
the less public exercises of the church. The 
feebleness and inconsequence of the average 
prayer-meeting need only be mentioned. The 
inefficiency of the secular school is bad 
enough ; but that of the Sunday-school is 
monumental. Of the little which is effectually 
taught there it is to be feared that only a little 
fraction is the doctrine of usefulness in the 
world. 

The results of the various church " services " 
are probably more than merely conservative, but 
only by a small annual percentage. The fact of 
chief significance for our purpose is that the 
church and those who assemble with it are not 
definitely and effectively taught the duty of 
entire self-giving, of utmost service to men. 
Some effort to urge that duty and the views of 
life which it logically involves has raised the 
suspicion that people do not understand what 
such teaching means. So far from being 
familiar with the Law of Service by having 



Cbeorettcal Zencbing of tbe Cburcb 19 



thought it out, they do not seem to give it 
serious consideration when presented. Our 
Christian thinking is not well accustomed to 
radical views of duty. It is not adjusted to 
the simplicity of the truth, nor prepared to 
accept its implications. 




V. 

PRACTICAL TEACHING OF THE CHURCH. 

THE agitation in church circles over recent 
1 phases of the old controversy between 
conservatives and liberals has been significant 
in bringing out bold affirmation of the old 
severe doctrines, and showing how widespread 
among religious leaders is a theoretical ad- 
herence to them. Modifications these doctrines 
have undergone, in phraseology or in substance ; 
but it is seen that the teaching of the New Testa- 
ment is very serious and uncompromising, and 
its denunciation of doom for the wicked, coupled 
with the solemn charge to bring all nations to 
repentance, is recognized in the common creed 
of the evangelical churches. Now the work of 
missions is crippled to-day, not merely nor 
chiefly by doctrinal controversy and want of 
harmony in counsel, but because the churches, 
professedly believing in the work, and certainly 
able to support it, will not back the workers. 
Many of these churches worship in costly build- 
ings and support their ministers in affluence. 
20 



practical teaching of tbe Cburcb 21 



Their members spend on horses and carriages, 
on servants, on houses and grounds, on foreign 
travel, on social functions and the luxuries of 
the table, on cigars and in too many cases on 
intoxicating drinks, and in general on needless 
personal indulgences, enormous sums of money 
which are needed for missionary enterprise and 
might be carrying light into the darkness of 
heathendom. One hears little against the claims 
of missions. Indeed there is some jealousy lest 
the peril of the heathen be minimized, and men 
who cherished some " larger hope " have found 
it an obstacle in their way to the missionary 
field. Nevertheless the contribution of money 
and men is so contemptibly small — in all sober- 
ness be it said — as to be a most effective satire 
on the doctrine. The well-to-do orthodox say 
in effect : " The heathen are going to perdition, 
body and soul, but it will cost too much to save 
them — let them go." 

The cry of the poor at home is making itself 
heard. These church members know that the 
poorer quarters of the great cities grovel in filth, 
moan with pain, reek with moral corruption, 
threaten civil order with the ever-muttering " vol- 
cano under the city." The problems to which 
this state of things gives rise are by no means 
solved, and the eradication of poverty and vice 
is hard, slow work at the best ; but certain 
means of help and alleviation have been found. 
The fresh-air fund, the college settlement, tene- 



22 



tEbe law of Service 



ment reform, charity organization, church work 
for the masses in various forms, — such in- 
strumentalities and activities as these make it 
possible to do something effective for the 
welfare of the poor. That this doing is wickedly 
neglected by church members their luxurious 
living and the poverty of the charities conclu- 
sively show. " Let the rich man have his 
yacht," says a famous metropolitan preacher 
whose orthodoxy, we believe, stands high, u Let 
the rich man have his yacht, provided," etc. 
Let us have a parenthesis of common-sense ! 
The rich man could get on very well without 
his yacht, and God's poor are going to perdi- 
tion for want of just the succor that its cost 
might send them. Let us think how it would 
sound to say : " Let Jesus Christ have his 
yacht, his tally-ho coach, his palace in town, his 
magnificent country seat, provided he will give 
on a like scale for benevolent objects.' y Christ 
had to give all ; we compliment the rich man if 
he gives a handsome percentage ! 

Hawthorne says of his "new Adam and Eve," 
as they wonderingly examine a modern city, 
deserted by every living thing at the sound of 
the last trumpet : 

" But how will they explain the magnificence 
of one habitation as compared with the squalid 
misery of another ? Through what medium can 
the idea of servitude enter their minds ? When 
will they comprehend the great and miserable 



firactfcal Geacbln^ of tbe Cburcb 23 



fact — the evidences of which appeal to their 
senses everywhere — that one portion of earth's 
lost inhabitants was rolling in luxury while the 
multitude was toiling for scanty food ? A 
wretched change, indeed, must be wrought in 
their own hearts ere they can conceive the 
primal decree of love to have been so completely 
abrogated that a brother should ever want what 
his brother had." 

Genius must needs see into this iniquity of 
things. Common sense is enough, provided we 
use it. 

Not long since a preacher of exceptional 
ability and breadth illustrated the triumph of 
piety over distress by a most harrowing picture 
of life in an almshouse. It is doubtful whether 
the body of the discourse moved one of his 
many well-fed hearers to any thought of self- 
denial for sweet charity's sake. The illustra- 
tion, powerful in its appeal to benevolent im- 
pulses and its lesson of duty, was made 
subordinate to the development of an old and 
well worn theme. The incident was impressive 
as an example of how the church is dealing with 
the people under its influence. They are not 
fools, nor wholly thoughtless. They have not 
only Moses and the prophets, but the gospel. In 
many cases the eloquence of an angel would 
hardly move them to direct endeavor for per- 
sonal sainthood. Many of them have perhaps 
unconsciously but decisively broken with pietism, 



24 



the 3Law of Service 



and taken up with respectable and unrebuked 
self-seeking. They have not the religious tem- 
perament, and religiousness is not in the air. 
Consciousness of easy intellectual superiority to 
much with which religion is associated, together 
with the weakened hold of dogma — a natural 
incident of this period of criticism and readjust- 
ment — makes them proof against ordinary ap- 
peals. Yet they are not malignant ; they are 
self-indulgent because in their little world it is 
conventional to be so, and customary to take 
the disjointed state of the times as a matter of 
course. If they are above the Sir Leicester Ded- 
lock type of conservatism, they are not above 
the easy irresponsibility of priest and Levite. 
While venturing the suggestion thatunder present 
conditions the spiritual natures of such people 
may best be reached by enforcing the Law of 
Love as a Law of Service, we are chiefly con- 
cerned to point out here that the church is not 
winning them either to spirituality or to self- 
denial. Itself negligent of philanthropy, it does 
not and cannot enlist them in the active service 
of mankind. 

The glowing imagery of Isaiah, his prophecies 
of deliverance and joy, have not their fulfil- 
ment in the distress of the myriad poor, the 
injustice and oppression of the rich, the disfig- 
urement of the world with sordidness and vice. 
The commission to disciple all nations was 
given many ages ago. To-day but a minority 



practical {teaching of tbe Cburcb 25 



in so-called Christian lands are reckoned as 
disciples, and the foreign work is carried on by 
a handful of missionaries supported by a pit- 
tance of money. The gospel of peace is pro- 
claimed in the churches, but the nations are 
burdened with the maintenance of armies, and 
inventive genius toils at new engineries of de- 
struction. The poet of pessimism who should 
tune his harp to bewail the badness of things 
would be embarrassed with wealth of material. 

The church takes this as a matter of course. 
The thought that it need not, the resolve that it 
shall not be, seems to have found no lodgment 
in the mind of the church as a whole. All the 
activities of the religious world, vast as they are, 
go on like a melancholy, unhopeful effort to save 
a few brands from the burning, to disciple a 
few of the elect for a future paradise, here in the 
midst of an incorrigibly crooked and perverse 
generation. The church, however cheerful in 
its godliness, is giving a sad answer to the ques- 
tion, " Are there few that be saved ? " If it in- 
dulges an optimistic hope that somehow the 
Almighty will take care of the unfortunate, and 
cherishes a reassuring theory that somehow evil 
is not so very evil after all, and a little more or 
less of it does not matter, it seems to a layman 
to do so in defiance of its creeds, and strangely 
ignoring the solemnity of its scriptures. 

The opportunity of the church to-day is mag- 
nificent, its motives to action most potent and 



26 



?Tbe Xaw of Service 



inspiring, its responsibility appalling. By its 
disproportionate dwelling upon trite themes 
pertaining to personal experience and personal 
religious culture, its failure to expound and 
emphasize the duty of giving self and substance, 
and its own self-indulgent neglect of the things^ 
that need to be done in the world, the church is 
doing much towards the practical teaching of an 
egotistical and sentimental laissez /aire. 



\ 




VL 

OUR POSITION DEFINED. 

\\7 E have shown that the teaching of Christ in- 
" * volves the Law of Utmost Service. We 
have criticised the Church of Christ for so largely 
ignoring this law, both in theory and in practice. 
In this criticism, and in some exposition of 
what the law means and implies, we can hardly 
have failed to indicate that the full acceptance 
of it would involve great and radical changes. 

It would be plausible to say in objection that, 
however great the force of the considerations 
presented as to certain things to be done in the 
world, it will not do to narrow our conception 
of the ideal man to that of a most efficient work- 
man under temporary and abnormal conditions. 
So far from disputing this, we affirm that the 
broadest ideal of manhood should be sought for 
in theory and constantly set before us in prac- 
tice. We maintain, further, that any narrowing 
of the conception of manhood will on the whole 
give us less effective workmen, even for the work 
incident to temporary and abnormal conditions. 
27 



28 



XLbc Xaw of Service 



Again, in deciding the complex and difficult 
questions which daily life presents under the 
Law of Service, we shall be and ought to be 
materially influenced by our views as to the ideal 
man in his relations, for example, to the beauti- 
ful. To illustrate specifically, our attitude of 
mind with reference to music in itself considered 
will rightly have to do with our actions con- 
cerning public worship, education, social usages, 
and personal careers. Without going deep into 
the theory of ethics, and philosophizing on the 
relation of virtue to happiness, we may say once 
for all that in our conception the ideal man is 
perfect not only in devotion, but in strength, 
beauty, and joy — mens sana hi corpore sano. 
This does not mean that any good thing is in- 
dependent of righteousness ; much less that any 
good thing can be in conflict with it. Righteous- 
ness, rightness, right, is one. The sphere of the 
good is nowhere outside of the sphere of the 
right. Whatsoever things are good, whatsoever 
things are lovely, are organic parts of the All of 
Righteousness. The forms of beauty are the 
forms of law. Joy is health, and health is con- 
formity to law. Ugliness and joylessness are in 
conflict with the Law of Service. No hint of 
beauty and of innocent delight in all the uni- 
verse, no elemental stirring of passion, no instinct 
for fulness of living, no uplift of the imagina- 
tion, but is an utterance of the Almighty, which 
we neglect at our peril. Following where truth 



©ur ipoeitton Define D 



2g 



leads, let us shun the falsehood of asceticism, as 
well as the impiety of license. All we need in- 
sist on — and for that our whole discourse is a 
plea — is mental and moral perspective, the ap- 
prehension of things as they are, and in their 
right relations each to all. 

Just thinking, which must be independent and 
unconventional, dealing with things at first hand, 
will still bring us back to the Law of Service, 
and re-affirm its obligation all the more con- 
vincingly because it has honestly weighed all 
evidence, and fairly considered all claims. The 
unity of the moral law will still be vindicated, 
grounded as it is in the unity of God. The 
hierarchy of truths, subsisting in the oneness of 
the truth, will stand as against the anarchy of 
conflicting doctrines. In a word, subordination 
of the lesser to the greater good, of individual- 
ism to the common weal, will be the teaching of 
the most enlightened reason. Our law will stand 
unshaken ; its implications concerning the con- 
duct of life, to the least detail, will admit of no 
exception or evasion. 

The chapters which follow, dealing with the 
bearings and applications of the doctrine we 
have formulated, may serve both to develop its 
contents more fully, and to strengthen the read- 
er's conviction of its soundness. Whether that 
law is often mentioned or not, every subject will 
be considered with constant reference to the 
Law of Service. 




VII. 

THE FELICITY OF SERVICE. 

CAR from concealing the fact, we have been 
* disposed to give it emphasis, that the view 
here advocated is radical, far-reaching, and in 
some measure austere. On the other hand we 
must guard against misconception by affirming 
most heartily that under the Law of Service life 
is wholesome and attractive. 

Felicity is found in health and in the normal 
exercise of the powers. If the Christian ideal 
be of contemplation, it does not mean health for 
man as God made him. If it be of spiritual 
striving, it means a fire which shall burn up the 
body, and perhaps involve the mind in its ruin. 
If it be of asceticism, it means neglect of much 
that belongs to the genus homo as such ; it means 
sainthood, not symmetry, a joy of devotion 
doubtless, but not that jubilancy with which the 
poetry of the Old Testament invests the world, 
or that sweet human happiness upon which he 
smiled who made wine for the wedding feast, 
and bade us " consider the lilies." 

30 



Gbe ^elicits of Service 



31 



If the Christian ideal be of utmost service, it 
means complete manhood and womanhood ; it 
means that harmony and balance of the powers 
without which the greatest efficiency in good 
works is impossible. The question is not of 
material progress, which in our day nothing 
short of anarchy could stop. The accumulation 
of capital is already enormous, and the requi- 
sites for wholesome living would be easy to get 
for all men were all men just and diligent. 
Moreover, from the economic standpoint, it is 
clear enough that the maintenance of those con- 
ditions of peace and justice on which material 
welfare depends, will require the conservative 
force of righteousness, not to speak of the re- 
form of institutions through aggressive Chris- 
tianity. The question is of moral progress, of 
spiritual life, of the kingdom of heaven, whose 
constitution is in the Law of Love, whose work- 
ing rule is the Law of Service. This being 
true, the manhood which will be of most use in 
the world is of no maimed or morbid type ; no 
product of excessive specialization or excessive 
labor. Certainly it is not something less or 
worse than manhood. It is not something 
greater or better, for nothing greater or better is 
possible to man than the perfection of himself. 
Being what we are by natural constitution, the 
Law of Service bids us by self-development and 
self-correction, under the favoring guidance of 
our Maker, to approximate the perfection of our 



3 2 



Gbe 3Law of Service 



human nature, that so we may not only exem- 
plify it for the imitation of other men, but do 
most efficiently whatever is the divinely ordered 
task of a man. What more attractive than the 
life of health, of growth towards perfectness, of 
workmanlike endeavor ? Again, the Law of 
Service gives life a meaning. It answers, or 
makes us forget to ask, that weary question of 
the day, " Is life worth living ? " What has been 
said will hold true if we have to admit that the 
joy of health in its perfection is for none of us, 
and that for many life must be in some sense 
" one long disease. " If we accept this law we 
may hope not to be overmuch concerned about 
ourselves — a prime condition of felicity — be- 
cause the altruistic excludes the egoistic impulse. 
Contentment and good cheer under the ills of 
life has been the experience of countless helpful 
souls who have somehow accepted their Maker's 
assurance that their life was not lived in vain ; 
that he would not mock them, nor put them to 
permanent intellectual confusion. Pluck is no 
uncommon gift ; heroism is displayed in the in- 
cidents of every passing day. Given a meaning 
of life, the generous spirit may even exult in en- 
during hardness " as a good soldier." Pleasure 
is not always attainable, as its votaries know too 
well, nor desirable, as they often learn when 
they pay its price ; but the joy of service may 
dwell even with pain and want. With this goes 
hope of larger service and more unmingled hap- 



ZTbe JFeUcitE of Service 33 



piness to come ; but the energetic working spirit 
does not aspire to an immortality of idleness, 
nor brood discontentedly over its hope of future 
deliverance. Were ignorance of the next world 
ten times what it is, yet life is rich in present 
opportunity ; were there no promise of immor- 
tality, yet a spirit touched to fine issues would 
find its own life great. Sublime, however cir- 
cumscribed, is that aspiration of George Eliot : 

" O may I join the choir invisible . . . 
Whose music is the gladness of the world ! " 

But promise of immortality there is, not only 
in our sacred books, but in our invincible faith 
and the consent of enlightened reason ; and 
with all the vast aggregate of evil in this present 
world there is the immeasurable well-being of 
conscious life, harmonious with the order of the 
universe. If the ugly, the painful, and the 
cruel are conspicuous, it is on a background of 
beauty and happy innocence. One wounded 
sparrow moves our compassion, yet the fields 
are filled with cheerful song. Brave earth, blue 
heaven, and the light of stars are a perennial 
revelation of God, which meets perennial re- 
sponse of gladness. To the natural felicities of 
our being, the life of service adds the keen zest 
of battle with evil, the supreme felicity of love 
uttering itself in action. It is the life of present 

achievement and of reasonable hope. 
3 



VIII. 



RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. 



IT is rather a commonplace that happiness is 
* not to be got by direct pursuit. It comes 
with self-forgetfulness, not with over-developed 
self-consciousness. The poet, to whom we have 
rightly ascribed some sort and measure of in- 
spiration, does not sit down and try to work 
himself into an ecstasy ; neither does he expect 
to receive " the vision and the faculty divine " 
by miraculous gift. 

" Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 

And shuns the hands would seize upon her ; 
Follow thy life, and she will sue 
To pour for thee the cup of honor." 



Wholesome inward experiences commonly at- 
tend on wholesome outward activities, through 
which, in turn, they are expressed and revealed. 
Perception of the truth and action according to 
it, right thinking and right conduct — these are 
the conditions of right feeling. He that will do 
34 



IReUgtous Bjperience 35 



the will shall know of the doctrine ; and he shall 
know of the experience also. 

Insanity is one extreme development of re- 
ligious egoism ; the unreasoning excesses of 
fanaticism are another — if, indeed, they are not 
a form of insanity ; the selfish luxury of emotion 
is another, and perhaps the most common and 
the meanest. Some excitation of feeling, some 
occasional glow of sentiment, and a life of idle- 
ness, or frivolity, or self-seeking, or ruthless ex- 
travagance ! There be those, it is to be feared, 
who exploit their emotionalism for personal ad- 
vantage. Consciously hypocritical Chadbands 
are few ; but the Chadband traits are too com- 
mon, together with the silly women who admire 
them. Greatly to be pitied are those sincere 
people who try to lift themselves in a basket to 
the higher levels of spiritual life. Far more to 
be pitied is the world in its need, waiting for a 
self-indulgent, thoughtless church to get itself 
into such a state as to be moved to begin, in 
earnest, that work of service which has been its 
plain duty all the while. It is not here claimed 
that prayer, aspiration, spiritual wrestling should 
be neglected or spiritual consciousness avoided 
— God forbid ! It is claimed that the Christian 
law of beneficence should be obeyed, and that in 
this obedience, and no otherwise, are the con- 
ditions of spiritual health supplied. It is not 
claimed that the church is too spiritual, but that 
it has too much to say about religion, as com- 



3 6 



£be %aw of Service 



pared with what it has to say and chooses to do 
about work. The man who fell among thieves 
cared little for the religion of the priest and the 
Levite when they passed by on the other side ; 
and the common sense of mankind — a precious 
gift of Heaven, be it remembered — affirms that 
the religious experience of such priests and 
Levites is little worth caring about. 

Out and out obedience to the Law of Service 
would bring in an experience which, though not 
new to some individuals, would be new to the 
church at large. This experience deserves, and 
will have, the honest respect of the world, which 
despises the Chadbands, but does not despise 
the Brookses, or the Moodys, or the Booths. 

It may be said here that one aspect of Chris- 
tianity which is made prominent at the North- 
field conferences should neither be ignored nor 
be dealt with in a half-hearted, indefinite, unin- 
telligible way. It is doubtful whether the great 
majority of those who profess Trinitarian belief 
have any clear and positive views about the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, as related to per- 
sonal experience and conduct ; and it would 
seem as if its exposition were avoided by many 
of our more intelligent public teachers of reli- 
gion. It is with something else that this book 
has to do ; but due emphasis on one truth does 
not imply neglect of any other. 

All true disciples will not have the same de- 
gree of spiritual consciousness, any more than all 



1tieli0iou6 Experience 37 



will have equal development of musical taste or 
poetic imagination ; neither will individual ex- 
periences be like Quaker garments, all of the 
same style ; but such spirituality as there is will 
be genuine, not factitious, wholesome, not mor- 
bid, where the Law of Service is obeyed. It 
will not tend to express itself in fantastic for- 
malities, nor in any manner of unloveliness. 
The beauty of the Lord will be upon those who 
do his will, 



IX. 



THEOLOGY. 

'""THE claims of theology are not to be dis- 
* regarded. Science and religion unite in 
testifying to its fundamental importance, and 
thinkers are seeing more clearly than ever that 
all knowledge is somehow knowledge of God. 
To the rule that the best things are liable to the 
worst abuses, theology is no exception. A saying 
of Christ which we have used before reveals the 
check and remedy for the notorious abuses of 
dogma : " If any man willeth to do his will, he 
shall know of the teaching, whether it is of 
God." 

Logic, which has counted for much in the de- 
velopment of theological beliefs, is a good ser- 
vant, but a bad master. Given right premises, 
logical processes bring us surely to the truth. If 
the premises are wrong, the better our logic, the 
worse may be its conclusions. A logical system 
of dogma may give us a cult which at the heart 
of it is no better than devil-worship. As a cor- 
rective for the vagaries of scholastic theolo-^ 
38 



39 



gians, the Law of Service will serve well. 
Obedience to it calls for the exercise of robust 
common sense. To serve efficiently, one must 
perforce be practical. The problems of service 
demand cool reason, and its practice forms the 
habit of plain reasonableness. A man permeated 
with the spirit and acquainted with the work 
of active beneficence is not therefore completely 
equipped for the investigations of the divinity 
school ; but a religious public made up of such 
individuals will furnish an atmosphere of right 
thinking, and will demand in its teachers no 
mere worship of the syllogism, but a style of 
reasoning whose conclusions will tally with self- 
evident truth, and will stand the test of use. 

Again, the doctrines of a church which obeys 
the Law of Service will be humane. The 
atrocities of religious persecution went naturally 
with the theology of the cloister ; and. the cruel- 
ties which still disgrace our civilization are a 
significant commentary on the thinking behind 
the conduct of the Christian world — thinking 
much of which has been both cause and effect of 
indifference to the appeal of helpless pain. It 
may be that "an undevout astronomer is mad" ; 
yet truth can be discovered in astronomy with- 
out devoutness. The development of the bi- 
nomial formula does not depend on a right state 
of the affections. In the science of theology, 
however, it is otherwise. Its subject-matter is so 
related to character that the moral bias and ani- 



40 



XLhc Xaw of Service 



mus of the student will powerfully affect his 
conclusions. It will not do to construct a deity 
by a priori reasoning and deduce a system of 
doctrine concerning him from the mere assump- 
tions of that reasoning ; and accordingly we 
find theologians appealing to the law and the 
testimony. The sum and substance of revela- 
tion is in Christ, the Word, who came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister ; not to break 
the bruised reed, but to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance. The Law of Service is 
an interpretation of Christ. The theology of 
those who fully accept this interpretation may 
be faulty in other respects, but it will at least be 
kind, not cruel. It need not forget that love is 
a consuming fire, but it must needs remember 
that the consuming fire is Love. 

Again, as we maintain that our Law gives the 
divine idea of man, since the sum of manhood 
is in its activities, so we insist that it points 
out the true way to man's idea of God. Our 
conception of God is anthropomorphic. We can- 
not escape this ; if Christ be the true word and 
revelation of God, we need not regret it. The 
nearer we approximate to a right view and reali- 
zation of manhood, the better able we shall be 
to approximate to the truth concerning God. 

If it be feared that interest in theology will 
languish in the presence of an absorbing inter- 
est in applied Christianity, the answer is that, if 
so, so it is best. If the captain of a Cunarder 



tXbeotosg 



41 



is too much occupied with the cares and calcula- 
tions of the voyage to employ himself in mathe- 
matical research, the passengers will judge him 
right in preferring seamanship to scholarship. 
Neither, however, will they fear that abstract 
investigation will be neglected, so long as the 
problems of actual life continually lead up to 
it, and the human mind is by its very nature 
subject to the fascinating allurements of science. 
The theology that efficiently navigates the ship 
cannot be altogether wrong ; that which drives 
it on the rocks or leaves it to rot at its moorings 
is ipso facto a failure. The knowledge of God 
has nothing to lose and much to gain from the 
doing of his will, 



X. 



THE CHURCH: INSTRUCTION. 

INCIDENTS to the work of the church must 
* be subordinated to essentials. Social enjoy- 
ment is incidental, yet important. When the 
social life of the church resembles the society- 
or club-life of the unchristian world, whether in 
exclusiveness, in frivolity, or in wastefulness, it 
is time to call a halt. Music is an incident of 
religious work, often unwisely neglected. Other 
things equal, the better music the better wor- 
ship and work. When it becomes a perform- 
ance rather than an act of worship, a costly 
importation rather than a spontaneous utter- 
ance, it is no longer a means of grace but a 
hinderance to grace. While good works out- 
side lack support, so long operatic display is 
out of place in church. Religious enjoyment, 
even, is also incidental. A church is no mere 
club to promote enjoyment of any kind. Nor, 
as we understand it, is it essential, though it 
be natural and useful, that the church work 
directly to promote the private exercises of de- 
42 



Zbc Cburcb: Instruction 43 



votion among its members. The church is to 
disciple all nations, to reform all societies, to 
enlighten all moral darkness, to alleviate all dis- 
tress. Let it do that work, and there will be no 
escape from a deepening personal communion 
with God. To try to be religious while neglect- 
ing urgent duty is to begin at the wrong end. 

Instruction in righteousness, we shall agree, 
is an essential. The Bible is the great text- 
book, not merely a book in which to find texts. 
Preaching, then, should be largely expository, 
not dealing merely with detached passages. It 
must view that remarkable library of history 
and literature as such, and its parts as related to 
each other, and to the scope and purpose of the 
whole ; each of the parts, in turn, calling for 
like comprehensive treatment and analysis. Not 
every minister can be a critical scholar, but 
most ministers should be able to keep in touch 
with current scholarship, as well as command 
the sifted product of older studies. The Bible 
instruction of the Christian year, and from year to 
year, should be planned for completeness of out- 
line, and for judicious guidance of private study. 
While reverent and careful, it should be broad, 
honest, and fearless. But this is not all. As 
related to service, all knowledge and all truth 
are the preacher's province. He not only may 
but must claim the widest liberty in respect to 
matter and treatment. The old jest, that the 
preacher must not meddle with politics or reli- 



44 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



gion, must lose its point. Prudence and good 
sense are never out of date ; but to shrink from 
discussing practical questions, exactly because 
they are practical and are provocative of 
thought and partisanship, belongs to that feeble, 
unmanly type of Christianity which has too 
often and too justly brought religion into con- 
tempt. The minister should be as true a man 
as the old Roman, and " meddle " with whatever 
is vital to human welfare, whether in the narrower 
community or in the broader. A thousand 
times better to make mistakes sometimes than 
slothfully to shirk the duty of thought, or cow- 
ardly to shirk the duty of speech. He who 
would instruct and reform men must expect 
them to be more than intolerant partisans or 
jealous self-seekers ; if he would save their souls, 
he must reckon them worth saving. We need 
more self-respect and respect for men ; more 
sturdy self-forgetfulness and generous impulse 
to fight against wrong. " Be Kent unmannerly, 
when Lear is mad ! " Be every true man bold, 
like honest Kent, when old King Demos has lost 
his wits, and would be flattered with lies or 
obeyed in craven silence. 

An acute critic has lately pointed out that 
Macbeth can go on adding crime to crime, be- 
cause he turns the truth he so vividly perceives 
into material for poetry rather than motive for 
righteousness. With a powerful imagination 
and a poet's temperament, he relieves the ten- 



4* 



Zhc Cburcb : flnstruction 45 



sion of his feelings in noble strains of eloquence, 
and so is calmed and fitted for his horrid work ; 
while his wife, to whom " words are things," 
fears madness from his meditation, and breaks 
into his rhythmic monologue with " What do 
you mean ! " The same writer reminds us of 
the dread that haunted the preacher Robertson 
lest himself should not go with his words ; and 
every man with the speaker's temperament may 
understand what Lady Macbeth could not. 
Nothing is easier, oftentimes, to the speaker, 
nothing more agreeable to the well-fed hearer, 
than to embody some truth of Christianity in 
sonorous words, just and beautiful enough, but 
deadening to the conscience because unrelated 
to conduct. Some quickening of the imagina- 
tion and glow of feeling, as moral as the purr of 
a kitten, may pass for devotional fervor. Sooth- 
ing as sleep, it even " knits up the ravelled sleave 
of care,' , and serves well for "balm of hurt 
minds " ; but my lady goes back to her unfeel- 
ing and wasteful " society," and her lord returns 
to wallow in the mire of the exchanges. Better 
poetry can be bought at the bookseller's — far 
better, in that it professes to be no more and no 
other than it is. Figuratively, if not literally, 
our congregations have been preached to sleep 
by thrifty sermonizers, who would have all men 
speak well of them. Let fearless, hard-headed 
men awaken them with doctrine, reproof, in- 
struction in righteousness. 



4 6 



Gbe Xaw of Service 



With the prayer-meeting as such, or as a love- 
feast, we have nothing to do here. In practice 
it is largely devoted to informal preaching, cleri- 
cal or lay. This should be instructive, if not 
didactic. Imagine an organization of intelligent 
people, united for the noblest purposes and 
under the strongest conceivable motives, whose 
weekly conference should be neglected by many 
of the ablest members and largely given to the 
repetition of certain feeble platitudes or good 
old formulas minus their life and efficacy ! Yet 
this description does small injustice to the aver- 
age prayer-meeting. The best talent should 
give its best, for instruction in the truth, which 
no minister can monopolize, and for counsel in 
the work, which belongs to all. The church in 
conference should forget itself and warm to its 
work, as every assembly with an absorbing pur- 
pose does. 

The Sunday-school, if not a model of what a 
school for instruction should not be, comes al- 
together too near it. Its proper text-book is 
left at home — possibly a good arrangement, if 
teacher or pupil knew the lesson. A feeble sub- 
stitute for it is wide open in all hands. Happy 
if the teacher does not read ready-made ques- 
tions to the class, and the class read ready-made 
answers to the teacher. With such a mockery 
of instruction, it matters the less that con- 
ventional " exercises " reduce to a minimum 
the face-to-face encounter of teacher and class. 



ftbe Cburcb : fnstructton 



47 



Without considering here the merit of the work 
done by those excellent doctors of divinity who 
deal out the Scripture piecemeal with fragments 
of commentary, we remark that local initiative 
is not encouraged, but anticipated and in effect 
superseded. The churches whose theory is the 
extreme of local independence, are governed in 
this so vital matter by distant committees having 
the substance of authority without its official 
dignity and responsibility. 

It may be profitable to say that a church in- 
telligently devoted to service will of course insist 
on efficient teaching in its school. Paid super- 
intendency, and even paid instruction, where 
practicable, is worth considering. He who sells 
his services is not therefore more bound to do 
his duty, but his duty is then specific and deter- 
minate ; he feels bound to render a quid pro quo. 
It goes without saying that piety is no sufficient 
evidence of fitness to teach, and it ought to go 
without saying that the more closely any work 
of instruction is related to what is most vital 
and most sacred, the more disastrous is ineffi- 
ciency in that work. In more than one depart- 
ment of church activity we should do well to 
lay to heart what Mr. Brownell says of the French- 
man : " He feels . . . that emotional seri- 
ousness will not transform intellectual levity." 



XL 



THE CHURCH : INSPIRATION AND AGGRES- 
SION. 

A S instruction belongs to the essential work 



**- of the church, so does inspiration. It is 
essential that men be stirred, quickened, in- 
vigorated. It belongs to our view of the whole 
matter to say that they are to be inspired not 
merely to activity, but in and through it ; and 
that we mean activity not merely of the emo- 
tions, but of the whole man. The church must 
shake off its paralysis of intellectual indolence, 
and let its torpor of mind be dispelled by a tonic 
breeze of thought and discussion. There is 
active thinking in these days among some 
few scholars and live men in the evangelical 
churches. The controversy to which this leads 
is deeply interesting to some of the rank and 
file ; others, here and there, are attracted by its 
speculative or sentimental aspects ; the great 
mass give it as much thought, perhaps, as the 
average woman gives to politics. Again, to the 
honor of the age be it said, the problems of 




Gbe Cburcb : IT neptratkm anD Bcjgreeston 49 



social justice and effective charity are getting 
the attention of thinkers. Professors, novelists, 
editors, clergymen, doubtless even statesmen, 
are actively interested, and in some ways the 
people at large show that they are not unmoved. 
In every age some helpful sympathy has favored 
the unfortunate, and in this, we may believe, 
there is more than ever ; but if any man would 
learn how little thought is given these problems 
by average church-goers, let him present to a 
company of them some broader aspect of social 
duty, some larger application of Christ's teach- 
ing to facts too sad, almost, for humanity to 
bear. The blank indifference of these good 
people will open his eyes — let us hope it will 
not embitter him. Eloquence might move them, 
but that will always move assemblies — while it 
lasts. If the question be of local and present 
activities, of definite doing and giving, every- 
body's business is nobody's ; apathy is the rule, 
active sympathy the exception. About such 
matters people are willing to be preached to, in 
a mild and general way. If the preaching be 
elegant and finished, tickling their self-com- 
placency, or eloquent, stirring them to a short- 
lived luxury of feeling, so much the better ; but 
lacking these qualities, so it be respectably 
verbose, uttered in a " holy tone," safely conserv- 
ative, and not too much concerned with imme- 
diate personal applications, the philistinism of 

the people will rally round the philistinism of 
4 



50 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



the preacher, while the cruel old injustice goes 
on. Many a good man preaches on, blind to 
the larger views, too much absorbed in routine 
to think with the thinking of the age. Many 
another, probably, yields intellectual assent to 
far more radical views than he plainly teaches, 
wishing, as a friendly critic said, " to take the 
people all along with him," and thinking of the 
more generous truths, perhaps, that they " can- 
not bear them now." Timidity is folly, and is 
the mother of follies and disloyalties. If Chris- 
tianity will not bear investigation, whether of 
its credentials or of its logical implications, it is 
out of date and should be obsolete. If it is too 
good for frank discussion, it is too bad for the 
uses of men ; if it loves not the light, it belongs 
to the kingdom of darkness. Let no man to 
whom truth is revealed deem himself its cus- 
todian with discretion. Whatever may be the 
counsels of the Almighty in the evolution of 
revelation, he has made no country parson or 
divinity professor, no priest or pope his plenipo- 
tentiary, authorized to give or to withhold the 
truth. Courage, man ! If you have received 
the light, be assured the time has come to 
have it shine. Away with your bushel — your 
neighbor can bear the full blaze if you can. 
Polish up your mirror, and send the radiance on. 
Yet you may be mistaken ? Certainly you may ; 
but the makers of creeds and manipulators of 
assemblies have been mistaken, and will be 



Gbe Cburcb : Inspiration anfc Bgcjression 51 



again. The narrow-minded self-indulgent, the 
Dedlocks, the Chadbands have been mistaken, 
and will be evermore. Your neighbor will be 
fearless in advocacy of his mediaevalism ; it- 
honest and thorough, be you bold in sounding 
the note of progress. The air will best be 
cleared, not by blanketing stagnation, but by 
stirring all up, and letting in the sun. 

What has been said of apathy and intellectual 
torpor in the church need not discourage en- 
deavor to work a change. It is suicide to argue 
that because things are wrong therefore they 
cannot be righted. Christ's remedy for the dis- 
ease of sin with its symptoms of misery is radical 
and constitutional. It is to be administered 
by fearless practitioners and in heroic doses. 
Imitations and adulterations may be perilous ; 
quackery or superstition may hinder its normal 
working ; but the genuine remedy may be used 
undiluted, without stint and without misgiving. 
The church is apathetic because so long accus- 
tomed to apathy. Occasional fervor and ha- 
bitual coldness have been its climate. Not 
incapacity but inertia has kept it where it is. 
Lacking initiative and direction, it has obeyed 
the laws of social statics. Under certain condi- 
tions, nothing more inert than gunpowder ; but 
the little finger of a child can awaken it to resist- 
less energy. Superficially, mankind are sluggish 
and conservative ; at heart, they crave expres- 
sion in vigorous life. All the world loves a 



52 



Zhc 3Law of Service 



lover and a hero. Restless material activities 
and the war of competition are but so many out- 
lets for the pent-up force that finds no better. 
Concentrating on emotion, condoning or en- 
couraging selfish greed, too often actually frown- 
ing upon inquiry, if the church has failed to get 
the best out of its members, exactly this was 
to be expected. If sporadic and unsupported 
efforts to interest people in the better way show 
small results, yet the leaven is working. They 
are accustomed to be led ; when the broader 
gospel so reaches the leaders as to break their 
unmanly silence there will be no dearth of 
followers. 

" While I was musing, the fire burned. " 
Spiritual activity comes by applying the mind 
to the things of the spirit. Whatever affects 
the welfare of men and the glory of God the 
pulpit should deal with, applying to all prob- 
lems the central truth, testing all theories by 
the same. Fearlessly the people should be 
brought to face what must force them to think — 
the facts of life in the light of Christ's teaching. 
Criticism and inquiry are to be encouraged, not 
frowned upon. Thought and discussion, which 
have been feared as hostile to the truth, must 
be welcomed as necessary to its thorough 
acceptance. The inspiration that comes of 
right intellectual activity is to the business of 
service ; and through exercise of the powers in 
service comes a quickening of the whole man. 



XLhc flburcb : flnspiratfon an& agression 53 



Get men intelligently in love with a good cause 
and at work for it, and they have " hitched their 
wagon to a star." Move on they must. 

Implied in all that has been said, and imply- 
ing it all, is the conquest of the world. The 
disciples are to go into all the world, and win it 
all. We have related instruction and inspira- 
tion to aggressive service, and in it we find the 
unity of all church activity. Under a less in- 
sistent view of the Law of Service, as the world 
justifies an extravagant devotion to self-culture, 
so we might argue plausibly for making evan- 
gelism, reform, relief, all outgoing beneficence 
more or less incidental to the self-centred 
work of the church. We might make some 
excuse for brief times of ingathering followed 
by long seasons of tranquil instruction, exhorta- 
tion, and devotion. But if the effort to show 
the authority and scope of this law has not 
failed, and our view of spiritual culture has 
justified itself, it will be seen that there is no 
warrant for assuming that we may choose be- 
tween the cool shade of contemplation and the 
blazing sunshine of that field which is always 
white for the harvest. " All quiet along the 
Potomac"; a splendid army wasted in routine. 
Well drilled, no doubt, and enthusiastic ; yet 
ineffective against the industrious soldiership 
of an adversary weaker but more energetic. 
Satan is always marching on, while the " sacra- 
mental hosts " are drilling in camp. " C'est 



54 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



magnifique," possibly ; " mais ce n'est pas la 
guerre." 

If ours is not " the people's church," it is not 
Christ's church. If with its costly plant, its 
trained servants, its social prestige, its hold on 
the imagination of mankind, its claim of a 
divine commission— if with all these it is 
merely a religious club, for the luxury of certain 
personal enlargements, it is masquerading in 
the livery of heaven, and the reckoning will 
come. 

" Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind 
exceeding small." 

The ideal church, under modern conditions, 
is a seminary of liberal thought and spiritual 
culture, a training school for service, a work- 
shop of beneficent activities, a bureau of 
supplies for human need, a headquarters of 
far-reaching enterprise, a rallying point for 
reform, a refuge from injustice. 



XII. 



CLERGY AND LAITY. 
HE greatest efficiency cannot be attained 



1 without right relations between minister 
and people. We choose advisedly the good 
old word minister rather pastor . To call a 
man a shepherd tempts him to self-conceit ; and 
the people are too prone, at the best, to act like 
irresponsible sheep. The exaltation of one 
functionary, as hedged with special sanctity, 
favors the bad distinction between sacred and 
secular — a distinction fraught with evil conse- 
quences in practice as it is false in theory. 
The dignity of the ministry is of no more con- 
sequence than that of the laity. Any work 
that does not invest the doer of it with a 
heavenly dignity is a vicious work. The 
church is to foster in all its members that which 
is above all earthly distinctions. In the wide- 
spread movement towards democracy we see 
the groping of the nations towards the Common- 
wealth of God. 




55 



56 



XLhc Xaw of Service 



" The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways." 

Not much longer, whatever its administrative 
systems, ought the church to stand against the 
new order by clinging to a social hierarchy 
within itself which is unjust and injurious to all 
concerned, and inconsistent with the greatest 
usefulness. 

The old and vicious way fosters vanity in 
small minds — and none of our minds are too 
large. It fosters ministerial clannishness and a 
dictatorial habit, while at the same time it 
tempts ministers to a subservient lowering of 
standards and humoring of prejudices, by which 
to maintain an ascendancy insecure because 
unnatural. It tends to the evolution of an 
unmanly functionary, posing as the monstrosity 
the weaker brethren take him for — something 
more and less than a man. On the other hand 
it makes it easy for the laity to leave religion, 
and with it Christianity, to the clergy. It con- 
fuses and debases their thinking on the most 
vital of all matters. 

The minister, as a man, belongs absolutely on 
a level with the people. Like the obscurest of 
them, he is entitled to precisely so much wor- 
ship as is due to our common manhood and his 
personal qualities. Like every other man, he 
is entitled to courtesy, to justice, to brotherly 
love and help. Just as much personal ambition 
as any Christian may cherish, he may cherish. 



Clergy an& Xaitg 



57 



Private ends he may seek as legitimately as any 
man. If the Christian man of business demands 
no more than freedom and a fair field, neither 
should the Christian minister expect more. As 
it is necessary that the productive labor of the 
community support an insurance agent, so should 
it support a minister, who in his sphere con- 
tributes like the other to the safety and welfare 
of society. It would belittle the manhood of 
the former to be a pensioner and a parasite ; 
so would it belittle the manhood of the latter. 
Ability with industry will earn a living in any 
profession, the clerical included ; incompetency 
is out of place in any calling, the clerical not 
excepted. The minister, like the layman, is en- 
titled to the benefits of self-respect. This he 
for himself and every true friend for him should 
guard with jealous care ; therefore the one 
should scorn to receive, and the other to give, 
an unearned, spurious homage. 

It is to be feared that such views, so expressed, 
may fail to get the attention they deserve, be- 
cause they seem rudely opposed to that good 
spirit of reverence whose decadence has been 
widely deplored, as well as to respect for " the 
cloth " in particular. As for the general senti- 
ment and habit of reverence, we must remem- 
ber that forms and observances, however good 
in themselves, will not suffice to maintain it. 
The unsparing criticism of our times rightly 
insists on evidence of merit before it allows the 



58 



JTbe Xaw of Service 



claim for reverence. It is too serious to be con- 
tent with polite or pious fictions. If it be held 
in particular that the clerical office should com- 
mand the deference of the laity, we only insist 
that as in the army or navy, so in the church, 
the forms of rank be treated purely as such, and 
the man be not confounded with the officer. 
Right progress is away from formalities to reali- 
ties. Let us think well of all men if we can, 
and do them honor, not excepting the ministry ; 
but let us shun confusion of thought, whose end 
is falsehood. 

If we have found out what a minister is by 
calling to remembrance what a man is, it will 
not be hard to get at his right relations to the 
people in church work. As prophet, it is his 
duty to speak the truth in love, but unflinch- 
ingly. As evangelist, he is to win for Christ the 
loyal devotion of men. As philanthropist, deem- 
ing no human concern foreign to him, he must 
make himself felt at every point for the better- 
ment of human conditions. In all these capaci- 
ties he needs the co-operation of the people. 
All these functions imply frankness and helpful- 
ness in his relations to the people ; then must 
the people be frank and helpful in their dealings 
with him. A conventional isolation is nowhere 
wholesome ; and in no sphere of life, perhaps, 
is it so dangerous as in the ministry. If the 
minister be a true prophet, he will be all too 
lonely from the necessity of the case. 



59 



It is possible to be critical without being 
frank, and to be both without being helpful. An 
intelligent laity must have convictions. Criti- 
cism of public speech and official conduct is 
inevitable and not to be deplored. It need not 
always be public, nor always addressed to the 
person most concerned ; but if just and weighty, 
it should find its way to the place where it will 
do the most good. To find fault behind a man's 
back because too cowardly or too conscienceless 
to face him, is meanness. If the critic has the 
spirit of help, he will naturally be frank, and to 
some purpose. A minister too sensitive or con- 
ceited to hear manly criticism like a man is 
too sensitive or conceited for his business ; he 
should reform or retire. Criticism, moreover, 
is not confined to fault-finding. Give the work- 
man the praise, as well as the blame, which his 
work deserves. 

Helpfulness is constructive as well as critical ; 
it takes the initiative, it feels responsibility. It 
thinks for itself and for the common good, not 
only in matters practical but in matters doc- 
trinal. It carries habitually, not intermittently, 
the spiritual burden of the church. Its means, 
be they small or great, are always seeking invest- 
ment ; the question being not how little it will 
do to give, but how little it will do to keep — the 
temptation, to improvidence, not stinginess. 
The business of the church is the business of 
every member, not of one salaried servant. The 



6o 



tTbe £aw of Service 



responsibility is not transferable. In a gener- 
ous spirit, but with a keen eye to results, the 
church should require of its chief servant his 
full measure of service ; but with far more 
solicitude, as the principal in every trans- 
action, it should itself carry on its own cor- 
porate work. 



XIII. 



HOME TRAINING. 



HERE is good reason to believe that in 



* Christian families generally young people 
grow up with no clear and thorough understand- 
ing of what the Christian conduct of life means. 
Supposing themselves to be enlightened Chris- 
tians, they are often, as regards single-hearted 
service, in the darkness of a baptized but un- 
schooled heathenism. This is no wonder, when 
amid the woe and want of mankind there is in 
the very heart of the church avowed belief in 
luxury, if only it be accompanied by large giving ! 
Verily the heathen will rage, and the people 
imagine a vain thing, until the elect have learned 
and taught their children to read the very primer 
of working Christianity. 

When it was intimated in these pages that in 
spiritual mechanics there is no lifting oneself by 
one's bootstraps, more was meant than a whim- 
sical analogy. A child can get himself nearer 
the stars, but it is only by putting himself into 
a certain relation with what is external to him. 




61 



62 



Gbe Xaw of Service 



He must climb by taking steps. If a child is to 
attain the spiritual levels of righteousness, he 
must be set at the works of righteousness. 
Knowledge and incentive he will need ; but the 
vital question will always be not what truth he 
has learned or what motives have been brought 
to bear, but what good actions he has done. We 
have tried too much, we may be trying too much 
still, to coax or drive or teach the young into 
abstract goodness ; we must work them into con- 
crete goodness. Grant all claims about the in- 
stantaneous new birth ; yet what has our scrutiny 
to do with the day and the hour ? What have 
we to do with the invisible process, save as it 
registers itself in a visible process ? Let us be- 
ware of promoting morbid or spurious experi- 
ences, by expecting in the ordinary child what 
belongs to riper experience and fuller conscious- 
ness. As the forcing process is contrary to 
reason, so it is confusing, discouraging, justly 
distasteful to the child, fruitful of reaction and 
alienation. To the rich young man Christ ap- 
plied the decisive test of conduct. A modern 
evangelist would have had him in the church 
and kept him there, untested. The same 
rational right-doing which may be made attrac- 
tive and formative to childhood is the condition 
of Heaven's favor everywhere. 

We must not forget that the young human 
animal is a being of " large discourse, looking 
before and after," endowed with god-like reason. 



1bome {Training 



63 



If we assume that he is a " blind mouth/' simply 
craving the most obvious gratifications, we shall 
fail to secure him the most enjoyment, as well as 
the best development. The pleasures of sense are 
fully attained and retained only in the self-con- 
trol of reason, in obedience to law. They, too, 
belong in the category of wholesome activities. 
Give the child in feeling and in fact the largest 
freedom, which is freedom under law. Believe 
that human nature is constituted to find all its 
adaptations in the wholesome order of right- 
eousness. See depravity as negative, abnormal, 
destructive. Have faith in the primal law of 
righteousness, and expect response to its appeal 
from an organism created to obey it. The music 
of humanity is indeed " like sweet bells jangled 
out of tune and harsh " ; but the profoundest 
law of man's nature is that of harmony with 
God. Herein is abundant encouragement for 
realizing that harmony in the individual by his 
willing co-operation. 

We have now the key to our position as to the 
moral nurture of childhood under the Law of 
Service. It is not by upholding an ideal short 
of perfection that we are to get the inestimable 
advantage of this primal righteousness of con- 
stitution. For the clear note of truth is reserved 
the jubilant response, the music of humanity. 
The wicked falsehood of compromise does not 
appeal to sound primitive manhood. Present to 
your child an ideal of Christian life which 



6 4 



Gbe Xaw of Service 



makes provision for selfish philistinism, and he 
may believe in it ; but you can never make him 
love it with his whole being. Away underneath 
his thinking is his nature, which is according to 
the creative thought, and keyed to the funda- 
mental harmonies. 

It may seem an abrupt descent from such con- 
siderations to speak of the gregarious, the imi- 
tative, the conventional in human nature ; but 
we must jgnore no fact if we would get at the 
whole truth. Facts trivial in themselves may be 
greatly significant in their relations. 

In the words of an unpublished essay : " If 
it be the fashion, you shall see fair women and 
brave men gloat over the torture of helpless inno- 
cence, countenance any absurdity or injustice, 
great or small, do it in Heaven's name or the other. 
Make it the fashion, and we sacrifice ourselves 
for an idea as cheerfully as we hang our neighbor 
for a belief or an unbelief. 6 What fools these 
mortals be ! ' From the cut of our clothes to 
the salvation of our souls, we follow the mode." 

The tendency thus satirized is to a thoughtful 
observer among the most striking phenomena 
of human life ; among the saddest, too, but also 
among the most hopeful. 

" That monster custom, who all sense doth eat, 
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, — 
That to the use of actions fair and good 
He likewise gives a frock or livery 
That aptly is put on." 



1bome Graining 



65 



What is true of good habit, the custom of one, 
is likewise true of good convention, the custom 
of many. If courtesy be assumed as a matter of 
course, courtesy will prevail. If courage be ex- 
pected of man or child, courageous he will be. 
If self-sacrifice be the unwritten law of family 
and regiment, the child will give away his cher- 
ished toy, the private will volunteer for the forlorn 
hope. The engineer who stands to his post in 
peril need not be a saint, nor an extraordinary 
hero. His conscience is buttressed by a sense 
of what is expected of him. Fidelity is taken 
for granted. The thrill with which we read of 
his splendid act is our tribute to a divine gener- 
osity common in common men. The criticism 
of our time plays havoc with hero-worship, as it 
exposes the faults of Luther or Lincoln ; but 
what we lose in blind enthusiasm for individuals 
we shall more than gain in enthusiasm for man- 
kind, if our eyes are opened to see that worship 
of human virtue is- worship of him who is the 
fountain of virtue, and who has made in his 
own image every human being. Men's hearts, 
let us believe, are better than their heads. 

What is thus true of the race is especially true 
of docile and unspoiled childhood. " Train up 
a child in the way he should go, and ... he 
will not depart from it." 

Of home training for service we remark, then : 

1. They who assume the parental responsi- 
bility must accept the Law of Service, and 
s 



66 



Gbe Zaw of Service 



square all their parental ambitions by it. They 
must see and acknowledge that to wish more or 
less for their children than is consistent with it 
is to be false to their trust, cruel to men, disloyal 
to Christ. 

2. The law thus recognized must be taught in 
the family so early, constantly, and thoroughly, 
that it shall be accepted without question by the 
child like any most fundamental truth — never 
doubted nor explained away. There are some 
things that are not to be investigated in child- 
hood. 

3. The young must be trained to doctrine, to 
experience, to usefulness, by the discipline of 
conduct. To do the generous, to abstain from 
the selfish act, to shun falsehood, vice, and ex- 
cess, not only as forbidden, but as unwholesome 
and mean — this must be rule and practice from 
the earliest days. The dignity and universal 
obligation of labor must be taught not only, but 
enforced by actual industry. The duty and 
privilege of giving must be exercised. Prudence 
must be taught, but as part of the economy of 
service — a far-sighted self-denial rather than a 
self-insurance. 

4. The honorable necessity of plain living 
must be insisted on, and its practice enforced. 
The commonplace assumption that expensive 
living is right because it is the custom of the 
well-to-do, together with the unchristian fallacy 
of supposing that any amount of giving can 



Ifoome Graining 



67 



justify or excuse needless luxury, should be 
utterly repudiated, along with the pernicious 
heresy that extravagance and dilettanteism be- 
long to the highest Christian culture. The cry 
of the needy and the judgment words of their 
great champion should ring in the ears of the 
child who is tempted to waste of money and of 
work. 

5. It makes no anti-climax to say that parents 
must use common sense. To this day the chil- 
dren of this world are wiser in their generation 
than the children of light. No spiritual fervor, 
not to speak of feeble sentiment mistaken for it, 
can take the place of a cool head. No natural 
affection, however lovely, can do the best for a 
child, without insight and sagacity. The sound- 
est theory of life may utterly break down in its 
specific application if applied by a fool. A sav- 
ing sense of humor may do more for a Christian 
household than strong crying and tears. 




XIV. 
SOCIAL LIFE. 

A MOST outstanding fault of our social life 
is costliness. From the many-millionaire 
who squanders a fortune upon the festivities of 
an evening, to the tradesman's wife who bank- 
rupts her husband to rival her neighbors in dis- 
play, the barbarism of waste is everywhere a 
violation not only of good taste but of good 
morals. The waste of money is not all. A man 
who moves in good society must be an expert in 
the economy of time or cheat his more serious 
pursuits of their due. As for society women, 
with honorable exceptions, they advertise the 
worthlessness of their time, taken at their own * 
estimate. Health, too, is wasted. Even in its 
mildest forms, social dissipation constantly 
breaks in upon regular habits, tempts to excess 
or imprudence, and consumes the strength that 
is at the best too little for legitimate work and 
play. However it may be with seasoned men 
and women of the world, there is always a con- 
tingent of busy people who must be at their 
68 



Social %ifc 



6q 



post, the weak, the nervous, and those who lack 
self-command or wisdom to draw the line. These 
need the benefit of social intercourse ; but so- 
ciety is to them a temptation and a snare. The 
very voice of refined and kindly hospitality in- 
vites them often to what they know is killing 
them by inches. 

Society is not only wasteful but frivolous. It 
makes amusement and display ends in them- 
selves, aud shamelessly employs a host of the 
poor in dingy toil or unproductive menial ser- 
vice that a parcel of gilded youth may waste 
their substance in riotous living, or eat the bread 
of elaborate and vacuous idleness — the natural 
prey of the caricaturist. The young woman of 
the period is probably more innocent than her 
partner in the ball-room ; but he is what he is be- 
cause society, of which she is queen, consents 
to have him so. 

In the busy world at large, mature men have 
little to do with social intercourse as ordered by 
any recognized code. They ought to be in so- 
ciety, but they are not. Women more generally 
keep up some kind of social routine ; and how 
silly a great part of it is, we know too well. The 
humorists and satirists cannot help seeing the 
poverty of our social life ; the mass take it as it 
comes, and hardly stop to think that they know 
better. The religious, by the very conservatism 
of their piety, are sweetly acquiescent. 

Our social life is selfish. With a false idea of 



70 



Sbe Xaw of Service 



culture, it is naturally exclusive. The exclu- 
sive people, with all their show of refinement, 
are vulgarized by a theory which neglects what 
is broadest and finest in manhood. Even sup- 
posing their culture to be all it professes, it is 
vitiated by denying its help to those who most 
need it. That which is ethically wrong is not 
aesthetically right ; for the laws of taste are 
God's laws. It were absurd to claim for aris- 
tocracy, whether of birth or of wealth, a moral 
superiority corresponding to its elegance and 
aloofness ; and no aristocracy is needed to set 
forth those excellencies which are non-moral. 
Christ was the finest of gentlemen, because he 
was the best of men. He solved the problem of 
culture in an environment of poverty. He gave 
us the master key to every social problem. To 
be unselfish, social life must somehow be inclu- 
sive. There is a natural stratification which is 
right, but it is not according to bank accounts 
or pedigrees ; it does not raise royal gamblers 
above honest gentlemen. If it is a part of the 
mystery of things that nature works largely by 
the rude law of the strongest, it is a part of the 
blessedness of life that higher nature is set to 
right the wrongs of lower, not to imitate and 
perpetuate them. 

If this criticism has seemed anywhere forget- 
ful of the many in scoring the faults of a few, it 
must be remembered that society is of all things 
conventional and imitative, and the faults of the 



Social %ifc 



71 



so-called higher classes are copied by the rest of 
mankind. Rightly judging that in many things 
the exclusive society is admirable, they follow 
its lead not wisely but too well. Of the same 
human nature, they are subject to temptations 
essentially the same ; and the monopolists have 
no monopoly of folly. That there is neverthe- 
less much good in social intercourse, as we have 
it, is of course true. Also it is true that genuine 
good-will is inoperative and honest effort wasted 
through ignorance or want of reflection. Criti- 
cism shows the need of constructive work in 
bettering what is good, and utilizing ineffective 
forces. 

The Christian rule of life and the Christian 
idea of neighborhood must govern all right effort 
toward better social usages. It is fundamental 
to recognize the brotherhood of all men, and 
the absolute supremacy of duty. For a selfish 
society we have no counsel and no tolerance. 
In the first place, then, wherever people are 
brought together socially Christ's words about 
the giving of dinners, as reported in the four- 
teenth chapter of Luke, must be obeyed accord- 
ing to their essential meaning. " To him that 
hath shall be given " — we need not go out of 
our way to prove that true. It is for the pros- 
perous to take thought of " the poor, the maimed, 
the lame, the blind," and from time to time to 
welcome at the table or the fireside those to 
whom good dinners are the exception, and good 



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society, under the present frankly selfish plan, is 
beyond reach ; those who long for home and 
have it not ; those whom a little encouragement 
and fraternal kindness would save from dejec- 
tion and the evil way. To the entertainer this 
would doubtless mean some loss. The gain 
would far outweigh this ; but we need make no 
nice estimates in such a matter. 

It is practicable in larger assemblies to bring 
the needy and uncheered into social contact 
with the happy well-to-do. This will require 
study and effort, and some abstention from the 
pleasures of fashionable circles ; but when the 
favored classes really wish to meet the poor on 
the broad basis of fraternity and good-will, they 
will certainly find a way. The church itself, 
whose organic law unites all men and all classes, 
affords a local centre, a bond of sympathy, com- 
mon interests and enterprises, various activities 
which combine useful work with social oppor- 
tunity. That is an exceptionally favored soci- 
ety in which meetings for social converse pure 
and simple can be entirely successful. It were 
reasonable to assume, and the assumption is not 
unwarranted by experience, that when social 
intercourse is more or less incidental to some 
kind of serious pursuit, the ice will be easily 
broken, the work relieved and brightened by 
recreation, and the recreation dignified by the 
work. A social club as such is apt to be a 
selfish club ; a club with a literary, artistic, or 



Social %ifc 



73 



philanthropic purpose may be socially a most 
delightful success. 

We must have the courage of our convictions 
about the duty of frugality. Good taste and 
self-respect should be easily superior to philis- 
tine extravagance ; but hard or easy, in fashion 
or out of fashion, economy is a sacred duty if 
Christ was right in his teaching. Late hours 
and all unwholesome indulgences, while in the 
same general category with the squandering of 
money and time, are more immediately injurious. 
Mere epicurean self-interest should abolish 
them ; the aesthetic motive is properly their 
enemy ; Christian morality repudiates them. 

From our point of view, the propriety of 
dancing all night, with an open bar close by, is 
not to be discussed. This is vulgar and bad, 
whether for " the four hundred," or for the 
million. Midnight Delmonico dinners at five 
dollars a plate are indefensible on Christian 
principles, even by doctors of divinity. There 
are, however, open questions. Of dancing, as 
of theatre-going, it would be unreasonable to 
say that it is wronger se. If the Law of Ser- 
vice were frankly accepted, the friskiness of 
youth would somehow express itself, as, doubt- 
less would the histrionic impulse ; but there 
would be sweeping reforms, or the professions of 
dancing-master and actor would fall into merited 
desuetude. Of course, all amusements would 
be put on the defensive so far as they are waste- 



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ful or issue in mental vacuity. The question 
of allowable expense always gives a large margin 
for debate ; but the presumption is always for 
economy. How far society may legitimately be 
exclusive and select is a question whose answer 
varies with circumstances. Specialists in the 
same field are naturally drawn together, and 
with profit, provided the ever present danger of 
narrowness and clannishness is guarded against. 
In general society, a certain concentration of 
wits and accomplishments is a condition of bril- 
liant and pithy talk, and a certain standard of 
breeding is necessary to put all at their best. 
Nevertheless, the leaven of fresh and vigorous 
thinking is precious for intellectual purposes, 
beyond comparison with mere glitter and refine- 
ment ; and thinking of this kind does not always 
go with repose of manner or polite accomplish- 
ments. Here, again, the dangerous tendency is 
towards the old selfish way ; the corrective is 
the catholic spirit of Christianity and of the best 
culture. For social problems, as for all moral 
problems, the central principle of Christ's teach- 
ing is the best solvent 




XV. 

HUMAN BROTHERHOOD. 

f^HRIST opened the way, not only for Jews 
^-^ but for gentiles, to a new and needed 
revelation of brotherhood. Peter the Jew, even 
after all he had known of the life and death of 
his master, had yet to learn that he must not 
" call any man common or unclean," and that 
" God is no respecter of persons." The logical 
implications of Christianity were coming gradu- 
ally to be apprehended then, as they are to-day. 
To the Greeks their neighbors were fiapfiapoi, 
stammerers, jargoners ; and the Roman word 
provincia, though of doubtful origin, suggests 
that harsh career of conquest by which Rome 
made her vanquished neighbors tribute-payers 
and slaves. At the best, Caesar's iron hand was 
the hand the imperial city stretched out across 
her borders, and at the worst such miscreants as 
Verres were the missionaries of her civilization. 
If at length the organizing genius of Rome could 
not choose but extend her franchise, and the 
Hebrew Paul might boast his citizenship, it was 
75 



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not so much the liberality of her spirit as the 
logic of events. The practical management of 
things must in the end obey their inner law. 
The policy of legislation must approximate the 
sweet reasonableness of philosophy. Human 
constitutions must conform to the divine con- 
stitution of man. The absurdity of Chinese 
walls between nations or classes of men is to- 
day so glaringly evident to any one who intelli- 
gently accepts the Christian ethics that we may 
regard the principle of brotherhood as estab- 
lished and concern ourselves with its applica- 
tions. 

By such missionary work as is done, and by- 
philanthropic service like the sending shiploads 
of flour to Russian sufferers, the principle is 
recognized, and the humane sentiment proper 
to Christianity somewhat exemplified. In re- 
spect to public policy, however, and inter- 
national relations, there is great need of bold 
and earnest words. The public, even the pro- 
fessedly Christian press, take too little account 
of deliverances like this, not long since widely 
published r 1 " So long as there is anybody else 
to tax, I don't believe in taxing ourselves." The 
party leader who spoke these remarkable words 
may possibly be a statesman in Washington, but 
he proclaimed himself a demagogue in Minne- 
apolis — a demagogue far more dangerous than 
any haranguer of the sand lots or spoilsman of 

1 The greater part of this volume was written in 1892. 



Ibuman JBrotberboofc 



77 



Tammany Hall. To " steal the livery of Heaven 
to serve the Devil in " is worse than openly to 
appeal to base passions or openly to rob the 
public crib ; to wear that livery deceiving and 
self-deceived by some fallacy of public spirit, 
appealing to selfishness personal and national as 
against fundamental Christian morality, is most 
effectively to debauch the public conscience, 
debase public sentiment, and undermine the 
very foundations of patriotism. There has been 
in recent years nothing more ominous in Ameri- 
can politics than the popularity of the doctrine 
of protection, considered in relation to the style 
of reasoning and appeal by which it has been 
advocated. This is neither an essay on politi- 
cal economy nor a campaign document. The 
author is not hoping, like the good Doctor Mul- 
ford, to " influence the fall elections," nor con- 
cerned here to argue the tariff question,/^ or 
con. The point to be emphasized for the present 
purpose is that if a public policy, directly or 
indirectly, imposes burdens on any nation or 
any human being for the sake of lightening our 
burdens and increasing our prosperity, it is 
presumptively a wrong policy, to be rejected as 
immoral unless it can be shown to be necessary, 
adopted if it must be with the deepest regret, 
abolished as soon as it may be with universal 
applause. " America against the world " as a 
party war cry is worthy of Milton's fallen 
angels 3 with whom it was the infernal pit against 



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the universe. Pure love of country is opposed 
to this /j<?#d5?-patriotism, as pure home affection 
to the clannishness of outlaws. 1 

In many personal relations, we have more or 
less imperfectly abolished the law of the strong- 
est. In " business/' that law prevails. In the 
relations of social classes it largely prevails still. 
In regard to international relations, whether of 
trade or of diplomacy, sordid motives and bar- 
barous passions are unblushingly appealed to. 
As corporations are said to have no souls, so 
nations, as such, with unity and consciousness 
enough for selfish passion, would seem to claim 
some immunity from the requirements of 
conscience, and to view human kindness as a 
sentiment rather than a principle. We are 
told that there is no such thing as authori- 
tative international law ; but we must remem- 
ber that there is a law of absolute authority 
for all human relations, exactly as binding 
for states as for individuals. If a householder 
ought to love his next neighbor, and live in rela- 
tions of mutual good-will and helpfulness with 
him, France ought to love Germany, and live in 

1 The rude and shameless pessimism that logically nar- 
rows national selfishness into sectional selfishness is seen in 
this passage from a recent biography of Webster : 

"It is true that his course " — about the tariff — " was a 
sectional one, but everybody's else on this question was the 
same, and it could not be, it never has been, and never will 
be otherwise." — Lodge's Webster, p. 171. 



Ifouman JSrotbcrbooD 



79 



such relations with her. If it is right for our 
churches to send missionaries to the Chinese 
people, it is wrong for our government to treat 
the government of China otherwise than with 
perfect courtesy and scrupulous good faith. If 
bullying is contemptible and wicked among 
schoolboys, it is wicked and contemptible for a 
first-class power to bully a power of the fourth 
class. If it is a shame to rejoice over a neigh- 
bor's misfortune, it is a shame for the partisan 
press to gloat over industrial depression or 
financial peril abroad, as a consequence that 
justifies our tariff legislation at home. 

" The parliament of man, the federation of 
the world," is no mere poet's dream. Peaceable 
co-operation in justice and good-will is neces- 
sary to the local beginnings of civilization, and 
the combination of primitive communities for 
common purposes into larger political units is a 
matter of like necessity. The American states 
have found peace and prosperity in a vast 
union combining local independence and flexi- 
bility with necessary subordination for common 
ends. This union, so comprehensive and com- 
plex, yet so simple in its working, is a new ex- 
periment on so great a scale ; but it has shown 
that with virtue and intelligence in the people 
it is practical and workable. Arbitration and 
reciprocity have begun to come as necessary 
attendants of Christian civilization. The same 
considerations that justify union on a small scale 



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justify and demand it on the grandest scale 
conceivable, and point to it as the ideal for 
mankind. The necessity for local indepen- 
dence may be more imperative as the system ex- 
pands, and the world-wide unity of sovereign 
nations may be in moral purpose and policy 
rather than in a political organism ; in a league 
rather than a compacted, centralized state. 
Again, as in the working of our great American 
experiment the difficulty is seen to be not admin- 
istrative but moral, not of methods but of men, 
so world-wide peace and co-operation can be 
maintained only by as wide a recognition of the 
Christian law for men and nations. With the 
acceptance of this, and approximately in propor- 
tion to it, peace and harmony must come. Men 
are learning to do things on a colossal scale. 
The ends of the earth are brought near as scien- 
tific enterprise diminishes distance and breaks 
down barriers. It would seem that the logic 
of Christianity cannot much longer be obscured, 
and that ere long right-minded men everywhere 
will awake to its inspiring vision and hopeful 
prophecy of a great beneficent commonwealth 
of nations, the Republic of God. 




XVI. 

OUR DUMB NEIGHBORS. 

\A/E have everywhere assumed that allevia- 
' * tion of pain and promotion of happiness 
belong to that service which the law of Christ 
commands. If this assumption is correct, we 
have a duty of compassion towards our " earth- 
born companion and fellow-mortal," whose inno- 
cent delights and helpless distresses appeal to 
every generous spirit. Even if we could ignore 
the question of what is due to them, it remains 
true that our treatment of the lower animals re- 
acts powerfully on our own character. We 
cannot be unfeeling in our treatment of any 
living creature without hardening and debasing 
ourselves ; we cannot deal generously with 
brutes and be altogether mean and selfish in 
our dealings with men. 

" I 'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken nature's social union," 

says the exquisite little poem above quoted. 
Literature contains many a kind word for the 
6 81 



82 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



creatures who cannot speak for themselves. It 
could not be otherwise, since literature is the 
utterance of what is better and finer in the ex- 
perience of mankind. It is probably true, how- 
ever, that in English-speaking countries at least 
there is far more of interest in these and affec- 
tion for them than finds expression or recogni- 
tion in books. It is certain that among us, in 
spite of barbarous custom, inherited indifference, 
and narrow-mindedness, there is a very great 
aggregate of gentleness and respect for our 
humbler fellow-creatures. This should be mat- 
ter of thought as well as impulse, of duty as well 
as pleasure. Good feeling should be sanctioned 
and supplemented by reason. Natural justice 
in this regard should get recognition as an in- 
tegral part of Christian righteousness. 

The evolutionist view which claims kinship 
for lower life with higher, and makes differ- 
ences, however great, differences in degree 
rather than in kind, is certainly worthy of re- 
spectful attention. It cannot be laughed down 
by prejudiced ignorance, nor suppressed by timid 
conservatism. Its general acceptance might go 
far, practically, to secure due consideration for 
our kin of low degree ; and we venture to hope 
that not many decades hence the prevalence of 
a more scientific view concerning consciousness, 
rudimentary reason, and rudimentary morality 
in the lower animals, with or without discovery 
of the " missing link," will have combined with 



Out Dumb IRetgbbore 



83 



an ever-increasing humaneness of sentiment to 
make cruelty to animals quite as disreputable 
as cruelty to children is now. But, however 
this may be, it wants only common sense, com- 
mon feeling, and honest dealing with the facts 
to make the claims of this subject evident and 
profoundly affecting. Indeed the perception of 
abuses, the impulse of sympathy, the private 
protest, is common. It wants agitation, ex- 
change of views, combination of forces, and 
aggressive action to develop the latent force 
into an onward movement that cannot be with- 
stood, because it will have all that is best in 
civilization behind it. 

This is not the place to set forth in painful 
and sickening detail the sufferings of laboring 
animals from overwork, the lash of brutal mas- 
ters, and neglect ; the meanness of petty torture 
to which horses — and humane citizens who look 
on — are constantly subjected on our streets ; 
the brutalities of the race-track ; the abuse in- 
flicted on beautiful and innocent wild creatures 
in the name of sport. 

Readers of Shakespeare's As You Like It will 
remember the evidence that even in his cruel age 
men were not blind to such things ; yet in our hu- 
maner times public sentiment does not condemn 
the reckless " sport " which is certain to inflict 
sharp suffering and often the protracted miseries 
of a lingering death. The pathos of a story like 
Warner's A- Hunting of the Deer, while it softens 



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the heart in sympathy for the victim, hardens it 
towards the pursuer with a resentment impatient 
of the proprieties of speech. Cooper's Leather- 
Stocking, that wise old foster-child of nature, 
though he lives by his rifle, yet condemns the 
vulgar rapacity of wholesale slaughter. The 
day will come, please God, when all cruel sport 
will be banned and despised, along with bull- 
fighting and bear-baiting. 

Grant all that can be fairly claimed of excuse 
for those who do as others have done, half- 
unconscious of the wrong. Make all the allow- 
ances that science will justify as to the lower 
consciousness of brutes and their supposed im- 
munity from apprehensions about the future or 
regrets for the past. Still the facts, both as to 
the aggregate of needless suffering and as to the 
heartless tyranny of those who inflict or permit 
it, are simply heart-breaking ; they are a disgrace 
not only to a civilization that calls itself Christian, 
and to a church that is too busy with itself to 
regard them, but to our common humanity. 

Poetry and science are widely different in 
method, yet they have much in common. The 
true poet, like the true scientist, is a loving and 
reverent observer, a student of nature. What 
Longfellow wrote of Agassiz, 

" And he wandered away and away 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe," 



©ur 2>umb IRefgbbors . 85 



might have been written of Longfellow himself. 
In science as in poetry, the imagination not only 
stimulates to exertion and rewards it with de- 
light, but is a necessary condition of the highest 
achievement. If poetry is earlier in the field 
with its swift intuition of realities, science with 
slow step but sure, correcting and verifying, still 
enlarging the borders of its orderly domain, 
works evermore towards that central unity of 
truth to which all right thoughts and imagina- 
tions converge ; so that by-and-by the two clasp 
hands rejoicing. Minerva, goddess of wisdom, 
is rightly also goddess of poesy. The poets 
have delighted to personify natural phenomena 
and the objects of the visible world. For the 
Hebrew prophet, mountains and hills should 
break forth into singing, and all the trees of the 
field should clap their hands. To the old 
Greeks, morning was the advent of rosy-fingered 
Dawn, and the sun was Apollo, bearer of the 
silver bow. Their happy vision saw beautiful 
personalities in the tree and the fountain, and 
the ruder imagination of the inclement North 
revelled in its terrific embodiments of power 
and passion. The modern muse, by more knowl- 
edge made less bold, yet 

44 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks." 
Wordsworth's heart 

*' with rapture thrills, 
And dances with the daffodils." 



86 



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Lowell recalls the time 

" When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." 

The lines of Burns To a Mountain Daisy illus- 
trate that sympathy with nature which abounds 
in modern poetry — a sympathy by no means 
confined to her weaker creatures and gentler 
aspects. Much of the personification of which 
we have spoken may seem purely imaginative ; 
but in claiming some kinship with things organ- 
ized by the mysterious process of life — 

" But I in June am midway to believe 
A tree among my far progenitors " — 

the poets can be taken more literally. A tree is 
a living creature, and who knows that it has not 
some dim prophetic stirring of consciousness ? 
A dog or a horse, intelligent and affectionate — 
let us not dare to despise its humble station in 
the world of conscious life. To do so is to come 
near despising him who is the giver of life, or 
rather who is life. Tennyson speaks for 
modern thought when he says to the " flower 
of the crannied wall," 

" ... If I could understand 

What you are, root and all, and all in all t 
I should know what God and man is." 

The immanence of deity is good theology and 
good science. While theism is learning the truth 



i 



©ur 2)umb Iftetebbors 87 



that underlies pantheism, it is not insignificant 
that our American expounder of the philosophy 
of evolution feels his way towards a rational and 
consistent apprehension of the divine personal- 
ity. The author of Cosmic Philosophy has also 
written The Idea of God. If all energy is energy 
of active deity, then in a profound sense the 
cosmos is conscious ; and the poet who finds 
sympathy even in mountains and sunsets is 
guided by his imagination to the truth. Where 
the divine energy does that organizing and in- 
dividualizing work which we name life, and 
whose supreme product in the highly developed 
personality of man is rightly called the image of 
God, the latent poetic sensibilities of the people 
agree with those of the inspired singers in a 
glad sense of kinship with living things from 
least to greatest. Let us hope for a day not far 
distant when men, no longer presuming to set 
metes and bounds, shall look with reverence on 
all the orders in the hierarchy of God-given life. 
Then, by an irresistible public sentiment, will 
cruelty to animals be not only condemned but 
forbidden. Then life will no longer be em- 
bittered and made coarse and mean by the daily 
spectacle of needless or wantonly inflicted 
pain. 



XVII. 
CITIZENSHIP. 

'"THE colonists of Massachusetts were right in 
* their theocratic ideal. If they blundered 
in policy, or erred through passion, mistaking it 
for holy zeal, or assumed that the ergo of their 
narrow logic was a Thus saith the Lord, yet they 
were right in trying to make their political estab- 
lishment a veritable Kingdom of God. Their 
views being what they were, they must with all 
their might enforce obedience to them. All 
honor to those stern bigots for accepting the 
responsibility they believed in — responsibility 
not only for themselves but for their neighbors ! 
If a pope of Rome believes himself the vice- 
gerent of God, he has no choice but to make 
himself in fact, with or without the forms, sov- 
ereign of all earthly sovereigns. No American 
theories respecting church and state should 
swerve the Roman church a hair from what it 
sincerely holds to be its duty in the matter of 
the public schools or in any collision with our 
cherished institutions. If any man or party be- 
88 



Citf3ensbfp 



8 9 



lieves that righteousness can be brought about 
by act of Congress, the plain duty is to get a 
suitable bill passed and its provisions enforced. 
Sumptuary laws, prohibitions, protective tariffs, 
and foxce-bills are right, provided it can be 
shown that they will do good and not harm. 
Paternal government is good if it will work. 
Laissez faire is not the spirit or the method 
of Christianity. I am my brother's keeper, and 
I must, like the Puritans, shoulder the responsi- 
bility. This is true for all relations, political as 
well as personal. The danger with those who 
would lay the track for the car of progress is of 
insincerity, ignorance, narrowness, false reason- 
ing ; and history shows how great the danger is, 
how frequent and costly the failure. Neverthe- 
less, conviction means responsibility, and re- 
sponsibility means the duty to act. 

It was written at a time when direct political 
reform was too hopeless to talk about that " the 
powers that be are ordained of God." It is 
still true ; and as we are ourselves the powers 
that be, every man sovereign as well as subject, 
and have a fair field in which to achieve reform, 
this is no time to shrink or scruple concerning 
our civil functions. Pessimism is a convenient 
cover for laziness or cowardice. Whoso is too 
sensitive and refined for active citizenship is too 
nice for the kingdom of heaven. If a man 
counts his calling too holy for this, count him a 
pharisee or a fanatic. 



9 o 



Zhc Xaw of Service 



The plain duty of the hour is to carry the 
moral idea into politics. With what is wrong 
per se y there should be absolutely no compro- 
mise. We are soberly told of late in a reputa- 
ble magazine that the President " must yield " 
to the spoils system " more or less ; he cannot 
help it." Is principle, then, out of date, or is it 
that a man of principle cannot be president ? 
There have been men who refused to be forced 
into wrong-doing, who could die but would not 
yield. When the very existence of the republic 
is threatened by a system as mean in theory as 
it is demoralizing in practice, and by the ras- 
cally abuses that are its kin, what we need more 
than the temporary success of any man, ad- 
ministration, or party is that one president 
should have the stubborn virtue to stand like a 
rock against the iniquity, prepared to fail of sup- 
port or die at his post if need be. Then the 
moral sentiment of the people will come to a 
head. They will canonize him who dares sacri- 
fice himself — rather they will rally around him 
and prove that right, after all, is might. Our 
public virtue is able, let it but discover itself, to 
cast out this devil of greed ; but they who should 
lead in all moral reform must not be too busy 
with pious generalities and personalities, too 
much engrossed with selfish cares for this world 
or the other, too conservative of party names or 
party habits. He who would serve God and 
man need not be on the wrong side of great 



Cftlsenebfp 



91 



moral questions. He may err in policy ; he 
has no right to err in principle. Not to be the 
steadfast enemy of political unrighteousness is 
treason to him who ordained the state. Good 
citizens not only hold the balance of power ; 
directly or indirectly they hold the preponder- 
ance, and they may dictate to senates and cabi- 
nets if they will. 

It is not in boldly resisting what is wrong, or 
fighting hard for the right, but in their processes 
of thought, the spirit in which they act, and the 
means they employ, that good men go astray. 
It is easier to take things for granted than to 
weigh and consider ; easier to follow the crowd 
than to pick one's own way ; easier to take 
headstrong will for single-hearted devotion, than 
to try one's own spirit, whether it be of God. 
Our plea for vigorous aggressive citizenship is 
by necessary implication a plea for catholicity, 
culture, diligent study of public questions, dis- 
interested purpose to be on the right side re- 
gardless of consistency or tradition, of popular 
clamor or the party whip. The inoffensive con- 
servatism of the average good Christian tends 
to make him exactly what he ought not to be, a 
steady-going, obedient partisan. It is this kind 
of partisanship which enables bad leaders to 
keep the forces of good men divided and defeat 
the virtue of the people. Parties there must 
be, but they should stand for opposing doctrines 
and policies, not remain divided on dead issues 



9 2 



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and fighting for public plunder. Take the 
loaves and fishes out of politics, hold officials 
accountable not to party but to law and public 
opinion ; then the way is open for division on 
living questions and the manly championship of 
convictions. When they will, they who believe 
in the higher law can abolish the spoils system, 
explode the fallacy of subservient party loyalty, 
and bring statesmanship to the front. No mere 
fiat will accomplish this ; it requires time, studi- 
ous devotion, and hard sense : but the essential 
condition is that good men assert themselves and 
insist on the moral law. They hold the key to the 
situation. When they are fully convinced that 
Christianity must actually be applied to politics, 
reform will come, slowly, no doubt, but surely ; 
and beautiful upon the mountains will be the 
feet of them that bring its good tidings. 

In reaction from " spread-eagle " patriotism 
and in contempt for " wigwam " rhetoric, we 
must not forget or belittle the grandeur of our 
national ideal. Truth is not the antithesis of 
poetry ; poetry is the illumination of truth. 
Macaulay tells us how the Puritans conceived 
the dignity of manhood in its relations to God 
and destiny, and they were right. If so much 
is true of individual man, what shall express the 
greatness of a nation, to whose momentous con- 
cerns those of the individual are as small dust 
in the balance ! The organ music of Webster's 
eloquence could suggest but not express the 



Gtti3ensbip 



93 



majesty of his theme. Lincoln at Gettysburg, 
that 

" stalwart man 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds," 

chose well in calm, plain words to pay immor- 
tal honor to the martyrs of a cause that shames 
the epic. Fittest of all, posterity may pro- 
nounce that strain of pious gratitude which 
warms to the impassioned tribute of a lover, as 
the Commemoration Ode, thrilling with the 
ardor of a tried devotion, sings the unspeakable 
sweetness of its praise. We cannot exaggerate 
the absolute significance of the nation. In its 
service our law bids us add to integrity and 
Puritan zeal the wisdom of history, the broad 
intelligence of the scholar, and the steady, far- 
seeing devotion of the man of affairs. 



XVIII. 



BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY. 

I F there is " no friendship in trade," it is be- 
* cause trade is war. Whether acknowledged, 
ignored, or disavowed, this is the view according 
to which perhaps the greater part of our busi- 
ness enterprise is conducted. The doctrine has 
good ground in history ; it is good descriptive 
science. In the process of evolution, the period 
of struggle for existence and survival of the 
strongest has not come to an end. Civilization 
has made all warfare more humane, but it is 
warfare still. Conservatism would keep up the 
fight ; but the Law of Service is radical. For 
hostility and exclusiveness between nations it 
would substitute good-will, the closest relations, 
and the peaceful arbitrament of law ; so among 
men and classes of men it would do away with 
the wasteful competitive scramble for means to 
live, and bring in an age of co-operation with 
mutual benefit. If civilization is endless war- 
fare, then civilization is no finality, and we must 
fight, if need be, for something better. Rather, 
94 



JSuetneee anD flnfcuetrg 95 



for it as for all that pertains to manhood, we 
will insist upon a more generous definition. 

A good deal has been written about the evils 
of the present state of things, which need not 
be repeated here. Poverty and suffering, with 
the consequent moral degradation, are not all. 
War is deadly to morality by its disturbance of 
normal conditions, and its stimulus to avarice 
and reckless ambition. With suffering for the 
many, war means brilliant opportunities for the 
few, and infinite temptation for all. Its prizes 
go not to rounded and perfect manhood, but to 
efficiency in violence. It is a school of certain 
virtues, but not of virtue. The economic warfare 
with which we have here to do is less ennobling 
and in some ways more debasing than its more 
tumultuous namesake. Of self-sacrifice it 
knows nothing. Its cruelty is not that of short- 
lived passion, but cold-blooded. The fighting 
is not brief and decisive, nor intermittent. 
This warfare remembers no peace, it looks for- 
ward to none ; it knows no normal standard by 
which to judge itself. Rather it deems itself 
normal, and makes the case hopeless by calling 
evil good. Such is economic warfare, pure and 
simple. From rumsellers and railroad wreck- 
ers to respectable men of business, there are all 
gradations between bold championship of the sin 
and honest protest against it ; but on the whole 
the system in which we are all entangled is at 
best a lame compromise, and at worst an outrage. 



9 6 



XLhc Xaw of Service 



The remedy, of course, is co-operation ; for 
co-operation is simply obedience to that law of 
the universe which no man or system can per- 
manently withstand. The word is not used 
here in any narrow and special sense, as if a 
nostrum had been discovered to cure all eco- 
nomic ills ; but in its larger meaning it is used 
with undoubting confidence. The proposition 
that co-operation will right industrial and com- 
mercial wrongs is like the proposition that heat 
will melt ice ; it is according to the nature of 
things. In God's world, because it is God's 
world, the Law of Love is not only of obligation 
but will work when applied. It is the duty and 
therefore the interest of the master to serve the 
servant. Mill-owner owes service to loom- 
tender, as well as loom-tender to mill-owner ; 
buyer to seller and seller to buyer ; farmer to 
mechanic and mechanic to farmer ; every one of 
every class to every other of every class. The 
eternal welfare of one and all hangs on conform- 
ity to this principle ; and not only Scripture 
and reason but experience shows that godli- 
ness, which is manliness, is profitable for this life 
as well as for any other. To utilize the gifts of 
nature, every class, every guild, every legitimate 
business needs the friendly aid of every other. 
To win the greatest aggregate of benefits for all, 
the enormous waste of working at cross pur- 
poses must be eliminated. Of energy to be 
harnessed, of treasure to be unearthed, of fer- 



business anD 1fh&U0trg 97 



tility to be made fruitful, there is enough for all. 
In the irresistible process of modern activities, 
men and classes are constrained to work 
together, notwithstanding hostile rivalries. By 
the operation of economic law, division of 
labor and combination of forces have come to 
stay. We have imperfect co-operation, and war 
along with it. The morning paper tells of 
private war with Winchester rifles in Pennsyl- 
vania. The irrepressible conflict between 
capital and labor under present conditions is no 
new conflict when it takes this shape ; we only 
see its true character more vividly brought out. 
On the same day a great religious convention 
meets in New York. While more than one 
newspaper advocates arbitration — the method 
of peace — it is significant that one calls 
attention to this as a great opportunity for 
Christian endeavor, and suggests that the con- 
vention offer the services of arbitrators. " If they 
settle the Homestead trouble, they will make 
a ten-strike . . . for Christianity." Whatever 
the practical merits of the proposition, the news- 
paper man is right in his idea of what Christian- 
ity is for, and many a zealous delegate would do 
well to meditate on his words. It is the work of 
Christianity not only to stay such incidental 
bloodshed as it may, but to learn itself and teach 
the world the essential immorality of all busi- 
ness in which one man's gain means another's 

loss, and of all business relations which are re- 
7 



9 S 



XLhc Xaw of Service 



lations of hostility. There is a great work yet 
to do in ridding the public mind of the hideous 
doctrine that social classes owe nothing to each 
other, and the belief that unchecked competition 
is a blessing. There is much to do in forcing 
attention to the truth that the Christian rule of 
life in all its uncompromising strictness does ab- 
solutely apply to business. Then there is the 
constructive work, already begun in some quar- 
ters, of showing that righteousness in business 
is profitable as well as practicable. It may be 
claimed that out and out co-operation offers less 
opportunity for personal advancement and dis- 
tinction. A similar argument might be used 
against peace between nations. Greedy ambition 
finds what it wants in war, and the misfortune of 
many is the opportunity of a few. The Devil is 
welcome to whatever force there is in this conten- 
tion — if monopoly and despotism are good things, 
let us have economic warfare to bring them 
about. The millionaire gets his board and 
clothes with plenty of hard work. If business 
were better managed he would not go naked and 
hungry, or be condemned to idleness. Men with 
force in them legitimately enjoy distinction and 
the sense of power. Personal superiority and 
individual leadership could not be abolished by 
the humane, rational conduct of affairs. " Peace 
hath her victories," too. There will be enough 
to make life interesting and strenuous — we need 
not fear. When it begins to appear that the 



EBusiness and fln&usttE 99 



altruistic way of living, fairly tried, is " stale, 
flat, and unprofitable," it will then be time to 
look for a better way. It is high time now to 
give Christianity the final test by applying it on 
the largest possible scale. It may be objected 
that we are telling an old story, and dealing in 
generalities. Very true — everybody knows the 
unhappy facts we have mentioned, and every- 
body knows the Law of Love ; but everybody 
knows, too, that the facts are widely accepted as 
if normal, and the law treated as if it would not 
work. There are certain old stories that must 
be told until their lesson is learned. We do deal 
in generalities. We have no specific with which 
to dose the symptoms of disease — no mechanical 
scheme for bringing in a manufactured mil- 
lennium. There are certain general truths which 
must be repeated until they are heartily be- 
lieved. The evolution in detail of a civilization 
in which the evils of the present day shall be 
minimized, no man can now trace out. Obey 
the Law of Service according to present light, 
and that civilization will come ; and every least 
act of obedience counts towards such a consum- 
mation. Let it be written large and plain that 
in the affairs of men CHRISTIANITY IS CO- 
OPERATION. 

There is another aspect of the subject which 
is too little regarded at present, whether for the 
general welfare or for the interests of business 
and labor. The wonderful development of 



ioo XLhc Xaw of Service 



machinery has tended to make working men into 
machine-feeders rather than artisans in the bet- 
ter sense. While mechanical devices come to act 
more and more as if endowed with reason, it 
would almost seem as if the workman in some 
cases were becoming part of the machine. In- 
ventiveness is powerfully stimulated, along with 
organizing and administrative talent. Attractive 
and lucrative careers are opened to the few, but 
for many there is dull routine, with little in 
their calling to awaken hope or warm the imagi- 
nation. The tremendous movement and swift 
vicissitude of modern life, especially in America, 
are not favorable to the homely pieties, the racy 
individuality, the traditions of good workman- 
ship that we admire in the handicraftsmen of 
earlier times and more primitive conditions. 
Swift changes have not given time for suitable 
readjustments. A balance-wheel greatly needed 
in our system is the good old-fashioned work- 
man's conscience. 

Older and more universal than the tendency 
to mechanical drudgery of which we have spoken 
is the tendency of labor to become sordid and 
servile, fenced off from generous aspiration by 
barriers of caste which it goes far itself towards 
justifying. All the more, then, the law and gos- 
pel of good work need to be preached in ring- 
ing words like Ruskin's, and the shams of an age 
that makes haste to be rich need to be de- 
nounced after the stalwart fashion of Carlyle. 



business an& Ifn&uetrg 101 



Money-lovers, as Ruskin himself has told us, 
cannot understand Christ ; but in plain workers, 
high or low, there is a spark of manhood that 
will kindle under the breath of his prophets. 
The habit of good workmanship is a tonic to 
the conscience, a sedative to turbulent passion, 
a school of preparation for just thinking on the 
great questions of life. It were a mistake to 
suppose that this habit can no longer be culti- 
vated, or that it can be made prevalent only by 
reactionary methods, by damming the stream in- 
stead of directing it. The machine-tenders, 
whose work is little more than automatic, are 
few in comparison with the whole multitude of 
workmen. The character of the worker is still a 
very important factor in the product of his 
work. Upon his character still, in the main, de- 
pends his prosperity. Where the situation is so 
bad that the workman's hands are tied, and merit 
cannot win advancement, there is a plague-spot, 
for whose cleansing what is best in the humane 
spirit of the age is becoming more and more en- 
listed. Such barbarisms, we may trust, are 
doomed. Both master and man, producer, 
handler, and consumer alike, are vitally interested 
in good work. Nothing but enlightenment and 
moral forces will avail to get it done. Again, in- 
stead of offering a handy, quick-working specific 
for setting things right, we are dealing in gener- 
alities — telling an old story. If we can generalize 
soundly and tell the truth pointedly, it is enough. 



io2 tTbe Xaw of Service 



Tolstoi lately urged his visitor to join the 
Ruskin Society, pledged to wearing hand-made 
apparel, and to living without " usury." " Great 
wits are sure to madness near allied." What- 
ever truth Ruskin has taught is none the less 
true for some unloveliness in the man, nor for 
the break-down of his mind in his later years, 
nor for any earlier vagaries of his strenuous 
thinking. All his life Tolstoi has been in the 
midst of that bad, half-barbarous system of 
splendor and squalor whose miseries have been 
so fearfully illustrated in these days ; and if the 
truth of Christianity has wrought mightily in 
him we cannot wonder that it has wrought also 
strangely. We may not flippantly reject the 
message of great men. Give us the penetrating 
insight of genius and the self-renunciation of 
sainthood, rather than the smug worldly wisdom 
of selfish mediocrity, and let us cheerfully take 
the risks. Accepting the substantial verities of 
Tolstoi's teaching and Ruskin's, we may yet 
hold that this restless modern stream of energy 
ought to be converted, not resisted. To-day it 
bears hard on some fraction of the world's toil- 
ers. The productive activity of the last fifty 
years has been applied to saving time and per- 
fecting material engineries, rather than saving 
manhood to make good use of time, and per- 
fecting institutions to make possible the enlarge- 
ment of manhood. The wonderful work of 
material progress will go on ; but we may rea- 



ffiueiness an& Ifnouatrg 103 



sonably hope that an increasing proportion of 
the best gifts will be devoted to the higher work 
of learning how to minimize rude toil, improve 
its conditions, raise its standards, and enlarge 
its hopes. We may believe that the intellect 
which has made possible so vast production and • 
circulation will add economy to efficiency ; will 
show men not only how to find means to live, 
but how to live in a rational way, to use as well 
as get, to rest and play as well as labor. Great 
exploitation of natural resources does not involve 
the necessity of brutalizing men. Cheap and 
swift production does not necessitate poor work. 
The inventive impulse is not at fault if creative 
has outstripped conservative genius, if hitherto 
we have shown more skill than wisdom. The 
benign spirit of Service will prove that the same 
wits which have achieved riches and power can 
achieve prosperity. 



XIX. 



ART. 

O HALL it be art for art's sake ? Yes, and no. 
^ The sense of beauty is a sense of God, in 
whom and of whom all beauty is. The art-im- 
pulse, showing itself in all climes and ages, its 
product ranging from rudest barbaric forms to 
the masterpieces of ancient sculpture, modern 
music, literature ancient and modern, is no more 
to be ignored than the beauty of the skies ; no 
more to be suppressed than human nature is to 
be suppressed. Beauty is the stamp of whole- 
someness ; innocent delight is both a cause and 
an effect of well-being. As pain is an evil, so 
pleasure is a good. In itself, then, the produc- 
tion of the beautiful for the love of it is inno- 
cent and right. On the other hand, there is a 
higher beauty of the spirit, a moral order and 
harmony which is of transcendent worth. The 
music of the universe is jarred upon by the dis- 
cord of sin, and the hoarse cry of pain drowns 
its sweetest notes. Christ must needs suffer to 
put the world in tune — but he was not an artist. 
104 



105 



His service, which is the service of men, can 
never ignore the highest motive and the central 
law. If art for art's sake means an activity that 
is not devoted to the common welfare, it is pagan 
and not Christian. The Law of Service, then, 
makes no exception here. The source of beauty 
and the source of moral law are one. 

The good workman loves his work, and all 
high endeavor demands concentration. He 
whose duty it is to paint a picture or write a 
sonata must devote himself to that with gladness 
and singleness of heart. Nevertheless, unless 
he can relate his work to the common welfare, 
it is not his duty ; he is forbidden to touch it. 
The deification of art, being like other idolatries 
a worship of falsehood, violates the fundamental 
principles of art, and substitutes confusion for 
the beautiful order of the universe. A right de- 
votion to it not only makes for innocent and 
wholesome delight, and trains its votary to the 
patient, workmanlike use of his powers, but, 
teaching his senses to perceive, his mind to un- 
derstand, his spirit to feel the beauty and har- 
mony of the creative thought, it gives him 
enlargement and symmetry, refinement, affinity 
for True and Good, as well as Beautiful. 

One chief use of art, then, is in the education 
of youth. Guided by the same exacting prin- 
ciple which may make us seem to the artist 
narrow-minded and puritanical, we shall claim 
for art such recognition in the schools as should 



io6 



XLhc £aw of Service 



satisfy its best friends. Study of form and de- 
sign, of color and the harmony of colors, train- 
ing of hand and eye, instruction in the simple 
and useful dicta of good taste, should be com- 
pulsory in all elementary schools, and should 
have an honorable place in the whole system of 
education. Of literature as a fine art, more is 
said elsewhere. Suffice it to remark here that 
imagination and sense of literary form can and 
ought to be systematically cultivated from the 
earliest years of school training, and the memory 
stored with those treasures of sweetness and 
wisdom in which literature is so rich. Music 
belongs to a rational education, not as an in- 
cidental exercise dependent on the educator's 
taste or whim, nor as a formal function, nor for 
the benefit of a minority with special gifts ; but 
as a study for all, regularly and scientifically 
pursued. There may be some so abnormal that 
they cannot learn the rudiments ; but, such 
cases excepted, every child who has passed 
through the common schools should be able to 
read music with facility and to sing an easy air 
at sight, and should be familiar with the ordinary 
nomenclature and simpler principles of the 
science. This rudimentary training in art 
ought to be related to the great world of nature 
by constant reference to its forms, colors, and 
sounds, to the wonderful activities and processes 
of its life. The elements of the natural sciences 
may thus be studied with greater scientific profit, 
and with far greater delight 



Brt 



107 



It is easy to object that much of this, while it 
may look well on paper, is impracticable ; that 
teachers are subject to human limitations, 
school life is short, and its work is already too 
exacting. The answer is that education, so 
far, is hardly taken more seriously than Christi- 
anity. Present incapacity establishes nothing 
as to what can or cannot be done in the future, 
and there is no presumption that what is now 
required of the schools is ideal in kind or in 
quantity. It may be suspected that progress is 
needlessly slow, through lack of spirit, faulty 
methods, and inflexibility, and that much of the 
subject-matter could be eliminated without ma- 
terial loss. At any rate, every reasonable claim 
ought to be vigorously advocated, and the best 
gifts devoted both to perfecting the theory of 
education and to reforming its practice. 

The college graduate is supposed to begin life 
with no great learning, to be sure, but sym- 
metrically developed, trained to the use of 
material and means, and acquainted with estab- 
lished principles in the great departments of 
thought. He is thus not only disciplined for 
work, but equipped for the criticism of life and 
the appreciation of what it has to offer. He is 
not a geologist or a mathematician, but he ought 
to understand the methods of science, and the 
conditions of demonstration. Elsewhere, though 
modest, he feels his power ; but in respect to 
the general subject of art, he is comparatively 
impotent. He may have special accomplish- 



loB 



ftbe Xaw of Service 



merits, or be indebted to favorable circum- 
stances ; but as a college graduate he knows 
next to nothing of aesthetic criticism, and is at 
sea with respect to the principles of art, if there 
be any. His whole general training would lead 
him to suppose that there are such principles, 
and to feel the need of that acquaintance with 
them which has been denied him. A layman 
may not venture to affirm that the professional 
artists and teachers of art are too empirical in 
their methods, and the art-critics are fanciers 
and phrase-mongers rather than qualified 
judges ; but an educated person may justly 
complain if he has been taught nothing system- 
atic and comprehensive on so important a sub- 
ject. It belongs to good general culture, if art 
is essentially empirical, to know it and to know 
why ; if it has some scanty outfit of doctrine 
with limitations, to know the doctrine and the 
limits ; if it can be rationally discussed and put 
on an intellectual level with other great subjects 
of thought, to be conversant with its main out- 
lines, and prepared to begin intelligently, if 
there is occasion, its more thorough study. 
Teaching the elements of art in the schools and 
its principles in the colleges would go far to 
correct the prevailing crudeness of taste, and to 
bring in nobler manners if not purer laws, fairer 
dwellings if not happier homes, more tuneful 
worship if not more generous service. The 
intelligent choice of those things which are 



Brt 109 



according to the divine laws of grace and har- 
mony must needs contribute somewhat to the 
moral betterment of the world. 

A right apprehension of the relation between 
art and morals leads naturally to a public- 
spirited view concerning the legitimate products 
of art and their legitimate use. Heavy expendi- 
ture for personal adornment, or in pictures, 
statuary, and interior decoration for the luxury 
of a few, is a species of barbarism but thinly 
veneered by polish of manners and refinement 
of taste ; say rather that the barbarism is brought 
out into bolder relief by the refinement that 
goes with it. Wasteful in a different way, but 
to a like effect, is costly decoration for tem- 
porary purposes, sacrificing the labor which 
might do great and lasting good to the transient 
gratification of an hour, the gayety of an even- 
ing. Imposing monuments to the dead are 
perhaps more noble than splendid palaces for 
the living. The former are redeemed somewhat 
by the sentiment they express, the latter by the 
publicity of their architecture ; but both, defi- 
cient in the moral beauty of benevolence, are 
untrue to the broadest conception of art. " All 
beauty lies in fitness." Private magnificence is 
not only morally indefensible, as we have seen, 
but it is aesthetically incorrect if in proportion 
as the beholder deserves to be pleased it gives 
the reverse of pleasure. It is in the open gal- 
leries and museums, if anywhere, that the cost- 



no Gbe Haw of Service 



liest works of art should have their home. It 
is where multitudes resort, if anywhere, that 
splendid memorials should be erected, and to 
those who have deserved well of their fellow- 
men. It is in public buildings and public 
works, in parks, in colleges and libraries, in 
churches, in all institutions which express the 
dignity of the people and are dedicated to the 
public welfare, in these if anywhere, that the 
master-workmen in the noblest arts may draw 
upon the accumulated wealth of the people to 
embody their noblest and loveliest conceptions. 

So long as need calls anywhere for help which 
money can bestow, it is the economy of service 
to relieve generously rather than adorn with 
lavish hand. The decorative impulse is to be 
restrained and guided by the austerities of pure 
art, not stimulated to barbaric excess. If the 
golden age of virtue and abundance ever comes, 
it will be time enough then to vie with nature in 
prodigality of ornament and delight. Mean- 
while, we may well take nature's pageantry for 
our solace, while in the work of our own hands 
we content ourselves with modest simplicity 
and the beauty that goes with use. 



XX. 



LITERATURE. 



ITERATURE in the most restricted sense 



" is of course one of the fine arts, and might 
have been considered under the general subject 
of art ; but the name is elastic, and literature, in 
every sense, is so important in its relations to 
human welfare as to claim separate treatment. 
The general views presented in the chapter on 
art apply to the art literary as to the others. 
Large space might be devoted to its educational 
use, which is there touched upon. Inasmuch 
as ancient literatures have been traditionally a 
chief material and means of liberal culture, and 
the claims of modern letters in this field are 
gaining recognition, we may dismiss the subject 
here with the remark that, important as litera- 
ture is in the higher education, it is probably 
still more so in the lower. The rudiments of all 
book learning — the use of the alphabet and the 
simplest relations of quantity — may be rapidly 
acquired. Extraction of the cube root and tabu- 
lation of sentences into the likeness of prostrate 




112 



Gbe 2Law of Service 



family trees need not be taken too seriously. 
Many things can wait, no matter how long ; but 
children cannot afford to wait for the blessed 
and precious experience of intercourse with the 
best spirits of all ages. Good company, rarest 
and best of educational influences, should be 
secured for every child through literature, then 
when he so readily takes the indelible mark 
of his surroundings. World-hardening begins 
early ; for many a child the time is soon past 
when his spirit might have opened to the pure 
delights of the imagination, when his thoughts 
might have been formed by the graces of style 
and the persuasiveness of truth. 

Whether we take literature in the restricted or 
in the more inclusive sense, in neither case can 
its moral and spiritual significance be justly left 
out of the account. The great French historian 
of English literature is profoundly impressed 
with its ethical quality. Pure art, non-moral 
and indifferent like pure mathematics, he finds 
conspicuous by its absence. It is well, we may 
gladly believe, if the race which is to dominate 
the civilization of the future is tremendously in 
earnest about righteousness ; and if the power- 
ful language of Shakespeare, fast spreading over 
the whole earth, is the vehicle of a literature 
which refuses to view human life without refer- 
ence to what is deepest in it. The French are 
good specialists ; but the supreme utterance of 
the spirit of man cannot rationally be a mere 



Xlterature 



113 



specialty, so long as man is supremely a moral 
being. Granted that as no moral intention can 
redeem a bad picture, so a moral poem which is 
not poetical deserves no quarter. On the other 
hand, immorality is in the deepest sense bad 
art, truth belongs to art as well as to morals, and 
art which is non-moral too often becomes in 
effect immoral. Of this, French literature itself 
is witness. The moral purpose need not adver- 
tise itself in precepts and platitudes, nor the 
sense of responsibility cramp the free spirit of 
invention ; but as of the artist, so of the author 
it is true that his work must be conceived and 
executed in righteousness, and related to the 
well-being of the world, or it has no right to 
exist. 

The controversy between romance and real- 
ism may be short-lived, and doubtless will not 
revolutionize imaginative writing ; but it need 
not be fruitless. If it leads to a greater regard 
for truth as opposed to conventionalism and 
extravagance, and for reason as opposed to sickly 
sentiment, both art and morals will be greatly 
the better. We need not insist that the novelist 
shall confine himself to the average common- 
place in character and events, any more than 
that the landscape artist shall get a land sur- 
veyor to stake out his subjects ; but we ought 
to expect him to delineate real men and women, 
speaking and acting as they might, could, would 

or should speak and act, and to relate events ac- 
s 



H4 Gbe Xaw of Service 



cording to the observed order of nature, the 
sequence of cause and effect. We expect to 
read of much that is exaggerated in sentiment 
and irrational in conduct, because there is much 
of it in the world ; but the novelist's friendli- 
ness, or rather nature's friendliness for what is 
wholesome and sensible need not be concealed, 
nor the weak-headed and the young deluded 
into supposing that morbidness is heroism, and 
dyspeptic twaddle is eloquence. It is at least 
gratifying, if not significant, that our chief 
American realist is conspicuous in the maturity 
of his powers for an earnest philanthropic spirit, 
and that he is not the only delightful humorist 
and master of style whose work, thoroughly 
modern in its cool good sense, is something more 
than amusing or entertaining. 

Journalism, in the widest sense, may be re- 
garded as the most important department of the 
literature of our time ; although the word litera- 
ture must be very elastic to include it all. We 
say most important, not because of the merit of 
the work done, nor from sympathy with aver- 
age journalistic aims, but because public senti- 
ment is so powerfully affected by the periodical 
press, the thinking of the great mass of the peo- 
ple so much at its mercy, and the average 
morality so closely related to its teaching. With- 
out venturing on general criticism, we take space 
for a few words on the daily newspaper. 

Business enterprises involve a large element 



literature 



115 



of risk, and a new departure in journalism re- 
quires capital ; but it is not easy to see why a 
broad-minded capitalist with a conscience — 
surely there are such — might not wisely engage 
in the novel enterprise of publishing a great 
daily, first-class in every respect, which should 
stake all on its uncompromising loyalty to the 
highest principle. Such a publication ought not 
to be sectarian and need not be religious, but 
must be essentially Christian. Without parti- 
sanship, that enemy of all righteousness, it must 
be positive and outspoken on public questions. 
With high ability, thorough investigation and 
the courage of its convictions, it must never 
shrink from acknowledging a mistake, or sacri- 
fice candor to consistency. Accounting it the 
first duty of journalism, though not its highest, 
to present the facts — " all the news and the 
truth about it " — our newspaper management 
will try to employ reporters who have both 
ability to discover the facts and conscience to 
tell the truth. This combination is too rare. 
Average journalism so deals with news that one 
expects gross error in details, and is not sur- 
prised at falsehood in important statements. It 
would undoubtedly cost something to get good 
reporting done. It would be worth the cost. 
The expression " all the news " is indecisive, 
and much depends on how it is interpreted. A 
censorship which should keep the reader in 
ignorance of important matters, whether pleas- 



n6 



tEbe Xaw of Service 



ant to read about or not, and screen the sub- 
stantial realities of the world's daily life from a 
virtuous public, would go far to justify the in- 
evitable resort to journals more instructive if less 
scrupulous. On the other hand, gratification of 
prurient curiosity, the contemptible petty intru- 
siveness of the " Jenkins " reporter, all forms of 
concession to the reader's vulgarity or silliness, 
should be stubbornly forbidden. The compe- 
tent purveyor of news will have some notion of 
the relative importance of things, and avoid that 
absurd allotment of space which is constantly 
seen and now and then remarked upon. There 
are some occupations, as for instance disrepu- 
table horse-racing, whose character and extent 
it greatly concerns good citizens to know, but 
whose daily details, eagerly followed through 
column after column by fools and sharpers, are 
of no rational and justifiable use. No parading 
of piety or affectation of respectability can offset 
the vulgar immorality of giving up large space 
to such things. In respect to those popular 
amusements which may be legitimate or may be 
and often are abused, the newspaper with a con- 
science cannot please all — it must act according 
to its own light. Here as elsewhere in this diffi- 
cult field, perfection is far to seek, but here and 
everywhere the duty of seeking it is clear. Im- 
personal and irresponsible journalism is a con- 
venient cover for unscrupulous greed. From 
leading articles to advertisements, the hand of 



^Literature 



117 



a responsible management must be constantly 
felt, and the question must always be not 
merely what the people demand, but what they 
ought to have. 

The public not only want the facts, but they 
want that combination and interpreting of the 
facts for which most of us lack the special abil- 
ity and training or the leisure. The clerical 
part of this belongs to expert journalism ; the 
higher and more difficult part calls for the 
broadest culture, consummate ability, and the 
rarest judicial gifts. The honored names of 
Bryant and Curtis at once suggest themselves to 
illustrate the lofty spirit which belongs to the 
great editor. It is not that people's opinions are 
to be made for them ; but that the questions 
and issues shall be fairly presented, with the 
arguments pro and con, and the facts made ac- 
cessible and manageable rather than used for 
partisan purposes to " prove " whatever suits the 
acute journalist's purpose. The people, as we 
have seen, are prone to forget the relation of 
public questions to moral law. It is the duty 
of journalism not to exploit the passion and 
prejudice of the reader, but to keep him remind- 
ed of the supreme importance of being right 
rather than being consistent or being in the 
majority. 

The power for good of a great newspaper, 
ably and disinterestedly conducted on the lines 
we have pointed out, will hardly be seriously 



n8 the Xaw of Service 



questioned by one who cares to read these 
pages ; but it is easy to say that the scheme is 
quixotic and impracticable. This contention has 
a very musty odor of antiquity. We have been 
celebrating the quadri-centennial anniversary of 
one of the occasions when such a contention was 
proved false ; and the conservative pessimist was 
an old acquaintance in 1492. Neither men nor 
newspapers will reach the ideal at present ; but 
we may and ought to look for high attainment 
in both. There are men who combine dis- 
tinguished ability and disinterested integrity. 
There is a great deal of managing and executive 
talent in the market ; recent American life has 
been an enormous training-school for it. While 
this does not always go with scrupulous morals, 
it is careful to obey the law of supply and de- 
mand. Let it be understood that the chief edi- 
tor's demand, backed by the proprietor, is for 
honest work, and honest work can be secured. 
Convince the reporter that he is paid for genu- 
ine investigation, discrimination in matter, care 
and moderation in statement, condensation and 
a decent style, and he will learn to take pride 
where he finds profit — in good work. If the blue 
pencil will not bring him to his senses, there will 
be enough to take his place. Demand does 
create supply. But the objector is impatient to 
close the discussion with the definitive statement 
that " it will not pay." A number of important 
enterprises have survived the shock of this argu- 



Xtterature 



119 



ment. It deserves mention that in these days 
when men professedly Christian and men ac- 
tively, though they may be quietly, beneficent, are 
millionaires with princely incomes, and when 
great fortunes are bequeathed for public bene- 
fits, not every great enterprise need pay direct 
cash dividends. Such a newspaper as we have 
proposed might do vastly more good than any 
pulpit in America It might accomplish more 
for humane ends through its influence on public 
sentiment and its educational power than socie- 
ties whose expenditure is the interest on millions 
of capital. Certainly there is nothing absurd or 
wildly visionary in the idea of investment in such 
an enterprise with the public good as prime 
motive. Again, intelligent and well-disposed 
people are exceedingly numerous, and are pros- 
perous out of proportion to their numbers. If 
the unprincipled, the philistines, and the vicious 
classes have hitherto been allowed to dictate 
largely the character of the daily press, and the 
better classes, as usual slow to move, have tacitly 
assumed that so it must needs be, it does not 
therefore follow that they would refuse to sup- 
port a thoroughly good newspaper. There are 
some few great journals whose merits, neigh- 
bored as they are by glaring faults, deserve high 
praise. Has any one heard that these are not 
financially profitable ? Unsatisfactory as they 
are, they depend on the support of the best peo- 
ple, and receive it because there is nothing bet- 



120 



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ter to support. Where great ability and pro- 
fessed independence are vitiated by actual 
partisanship, and that not over-scrupulous, or 
respectable old partisanship, though able, glories 
in its limitations, there is certainly room for a 
new departure ; and good work would not only 
meet with a hearty welcome, but create a new 
and growing demand. The best product of 
journalism to-day is by no means sharply distin- 
guished from pure literature. A better manage- 
ment would bring the literary element still more 
to the front, and would do much in various ways 
for the development of the public taste, and of a 
literature fresh and strong by its vital connection 
with the life of the people. 

As journalism should keep us in touch with 
the times without doing the work of a drag-net 
to dump at our firesides an unselected and un- 
cleansed mass, so it belongs to general literature 
to acquaint us with the life of all times, the 
whole range of human experience, and the sub- 
stance of all important thinking, without defiling 
our imagination, vitiating our sympathies, or dis- 
turbing the balance of our judgment. The field 
is too great for omnivorous reading, even if that 
were desirable. The mature reader for himself, 
and the parent or educator for the young, must 
exercise some kind of discrimination or censor- 
ship ; and upon the method of this, momentous 
consequences depend. The attempt to " form 
the mind " of youth by a restricted choice of 



literature 



121 



reading warranted to be orthodox in teaching 
and safely conventional in matter and treatment 
may easily be unfair as well as injudicious. 
None of us are perfect in wisdom ; and it is not 
right, acting on the assumption that our views 
are the only safe ones, to narrow unduly a young 
person's field of vision, lest he be tempted to 
think for himself. The writers of power and the 
masters of style are not those safe, commonplace 
persons whose deliverances can be warranted 
harmless. The great books of the world, not ex- 
cepting those that make up the Bible, are bold in 
expressing the thought that is uppermost, and 
they call a spade a spade. Such books may 
easily be perverted to the purposes of false 
reasoning or morbid imagination. The Devil can 
cite scripture for his purpose. To avoid all 
danger were to avoid the best of life. Never- 
theless, it is imperative that there be some dis- 
crimination for those who cannot yet choose for 
themselves. It is safe to banish all books that 
are weak and trashy, whether pious or impious ; 
all books, of whatever stamp, that are morbid; all 
books, of course, that are covertly or openly im- 
moral. Books of controversy are not for the 
young ; the judicial temper comes late, if hap- 
pily it come at all. But the best way to keep out 
the bad is to fill the thoughts with what is good. 
Strong books and morally sound, enforcing uni- 
versal truth, and if by example rather than pre- 
cept, so much the better ; books of kindling 



122 



tLhc Xaw of Service 



thought and large horizon; books of imagination, 
of beauty, of nature, of sympathy with all the 
living — these are not always wholly safe, but it 
is wise to read them. The world is a dangerous 
place, and character must not be left to be 
formed by reading only. The key to the moraU 
labyrinth of this world must be given in the cen- 
tral Law of Love, to which, from infancy, all 
things thould be related, and all gracious influ- 
ences invoked until it be written upon the heart. 
Then the selective and assimilative principle 
will not be wanting, that all things may work to- 
gether for good. Loyal to that law, we cannot 
go fatally astray. Inspired by it, we shall profit 
by the literature of power, of imagination, of the 
history of man, of all knowledge and philosophy. 

As to the literature of the future, we are in 
the dark. We cannot judge of it by the past, 
because the conditions of the past cannot be 
repeated. The childhood of the world, with its 
glorious imagination born of ignorance and mys- 
tery, has gone forever. Science, with weights 
and measures and dry white light, material pro- 
gress, with its smoke and roar and commonplace 
splendor, even philanthropy, with its model 
tenement houses, might seem to have banished 
the muses. But though we may not see how the 
eloquence and song of the future are to come, 
let us remember that beauty and power still ex- 
ist, the barrier of mystery remains, only a little 
farther removed, the light that never was on sea 



literature 



123 



or land still shines for the pure in heart, the 
soul of man is greater than the accidents of 
time. The literature of the future, if frankly 
Christian, will be only the truer and sounder ; 
if it has taken to itself the wisdom of science, 
it will be all the more conversant with the 
thoughts of God. Old Hebrew poetry may give 
us hints of an imagination more primitive and 
deeper than the Greek or the Elizabethan, and 
therefore more perennial. The stuff that poetry 
is made of is in the New Testament also, and in 
modern life. The poetry lingers, but its golden 
age, we may believe, is somehow yet to come. 



XXI. 



EDUCATION. 

IF this chapter treats of higher education, it 
* is not in disparagement of the lower. The 
common schools are significant and important 
beyond the danger of exaggeration. While they 
might in some fashion do their work if academic 
culture did not exist, as a matter of fact they 
are largely dependent upon it for their efficiency, 
and ought to be far more in touch with it than 
they are. So far as the common schools differ 
in principle from systems of business appren- 
ticeship, from utilitarian establishments pure 
and simple, the same doctrines which apply to 
higher institutions apply, mictatis mutandis, to 
them. Pressing and difficult as are the problems 
of administration and method in elementary 
work, a good system will surely be evolved 
where there is broad and sound thinking with 
sincere devotion in the leaders of culture, and 
enlightened public spirit in the people at large. 
Without these, systems and appliances, technical 
training and financial support, will be compara- 
tively of little avail, 

124 



JEOucatlon 



125 



In a recent public discourse an American prel- 
ate, fired with the vision of " the Ireland of St. 
Patrick as that great servant of God left it — its 
bishops, priests, monks, monasteries, schools, 
colleges," waxed eloquent over the " Greater 
Ireland of the West." Doubtless the mediaeval 
church did great service in keeping alight the 
torch of learning and handing on the unworldly 
traditions of the cloister. " The still air of 
delightful studies " John Milton was not the 
first to breathe ; rather with his free spirit 
and liberal learning he opened to a more 
bracing atmosphere and a brighter sunlight the 
studious retirement of many generations of 
monks. The modern university has its roots 
deep in the past. The good archbishop just 
quoted, so enamored of the mediaeval, strikingly 
illustrates the conservatism of priestly robe and 
scholastic gown. Long ago the English church 
gave up the celibacy of the priest, but the Eng- 
lish universities have clung to the celibacy of 
the scholar down to our times. Handmaid dur- 
ing the dark ages of a religion whose ideals were 
abnormal and its thinking therefore cramped 
and perverted, roused into zealous activity by a 
revival of interest in classical antiquity rather 
than by a spirit of inquiry into the great con- 
cerns of the present, it is no wonder if university 
learning has been slow to understand the modern 
spirit, and has lacked flexibility and practical 
sense for the adequate leadership of modern 



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culture. Bringing their standards and methods 
from the past, the higher schools have been a 
law unto themselves. Prestige of priesthood, of 
antiquity and the mystery of learning, together 
with remoteness from the every-day business of 
life, has traditionally given them comparative 
immunity from criticism. Outside of favored 
circles there has been so much ignorance of the 
whole matter, and the business world has found 
so little in their product to which to apply effec- 
tively its rigorous tests, that they have been irre- 
sponsible ; and irresponsible management is bad 
management. Now this mediaevalism and irre- 
sponsibility has in recent times had to encounter 
the rapid and arrogant development of a materi- 
alistic civilization, with its worship of u success," 
its worldly spirit and habits, its utilitarian de- 
mands, and its control of " the sinews of war." 
If higher education to-day, then, is in a chaotic 
state, combining the faults of old and new with- 
out doing justice to either, the reason is obvious. 

The spirited address which Mr. Charles Fran- 
cis Adams delivered some years ago, entitled 
" A College Fetich," was right in so far as it 
maintained that education should prepare us for 
the work of life. If he had taken the Law of 
Service for his text, this would have been merely 
the logical deduction. It should not be neces- 
sary to point out here that moral culture is best 
attained in preparing for that work and per- 
forming it ; and it needs no labored argument 



Education 



127 



to show that in this same preparation and per- 
formance is a sufficient field not only for bring- 
ing the intellect to its highest efficiency, but for 
giving it most generous cultivation. The work 
of life is so vast, varied, and arduous ; it calls for 
such breadth of view, penetration, wealth of 
knowledge and philosophic intelligence ; it con- 
nects at so many points with what is finest, 
deepest, most inspiring in the realm of thought, 
and it appeals so powerfully to the imagination, 
that no academic ideal need embrace more in 
its field of culture, no university ambition need 
aspire to greater achievement of research than 
is involved in the largest performance of this 
work. It will be seen that, here as elsewhere in 
these pages, the work of life means not getting 
a living merely, not getting wealth or any kind 
of power or distinction, not merely nor chiefly 
getting, but giving. Evidently one's theory of 
education will be greatly affected by his defini- 
tion of the work of life ; but if Mr. Adams or 
any other critic holds that education should 
make for practical efficiency, so far forth he is 
eminently right. Perhaps enough has been said 
by the critics, and with substantial justice, es- 
pecially if the critics are themselves college men 
by training and sympathy, as to the unsatisfac- 
tory and inadequate results of college work. 
Much has been said, and a good deal has been 
done, about changes in the curriculum and ex- 
tension of the elective system ; and the move- 



128 



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ment in this direction hardly needs more pushing 
than it gets. There are, however, certain faults 
in the higher education as we have it, which call 
for severe criticism. 

Many incidentals there are, of greater or less 
account ; but the essential and distinctive thing 
about a school is the encounter of student with 
instructor. We may narrow Garfield's much 
quoted definition ; give us Mark Hopkins and 
the boy, and no matter about the bench. It 
should follow, then, that the office of instructor 
is here of a dignity commensurate with its im- 
portance. University research is educative, but 
incidentally so. The most distinguished critic, 
investigator, or constructive thinker may fail as 
an instructor. It is no disparagement of the 
functions of the university to point this out, and 
to insist that instruction of youth, not the ad- 
vancement of learning, should be the aim and 
the sufficient ambition of those institutions, 
always by right the great majority, which pre- 
pare young people for life, rather than for pro- 
fessions and specialties. As culture is incidental 
to university work, so productiveness should be 
incidental to the work of general education ; 
and if the educator suffers himself to be lured 
to the neglect of his proper business by the at- 
tractiveness or personal profit of investigation 
and authorship, he may gain advantage to him- 
self, but it is at the expense of his pupils. As 
for the specialist everything centres in his 



Education 



specialty, and for the author everything con- 
tributes to his books, so for the instructor all 
should centre in the class-room, and all con- 
tribute to his efficiency there. There should be 
his pride, his ambition, his devotion. This may 
seem to many a hard saying about a humble and 
toilsome work ; but let it be noted that making 
men and women is quite as great as making 
discoveries, or making books, or making money. 
It is doing at first hand that which all worthiest 
effort directly or indirectly seeks to do. More- 
over the work is so elevated and exacting as to 
demand for its right performance the most 
liberal and unremitting personal culture, and 
so interesting in itself as that ought to be which 
deals immediately with human nature, most in- 
teresting of subjects, at its most plastic and 
attractive period. If for any teacher this is not 
enough, the world is wide — let him leave the 
profession. Special gifts are for special uses ; 
and as to those unfortunates who can make 
nothing better than drudgery of this magnifi- 
cent and delightful service, there are humbler 
and more congenial tasks in plenty for their 
commonplace abilities. 

The notion has got abroad of late years that 
the chief officer of an institution of learning 
must be a man of " business," a good figure- 
head, a man of the world to push the claims of 
his charge and raise money for it. Certainly he 
should be in the broadest sense a man of busi- 

9 



130 



ftbe Xaw of Service 



ness, and if professionally competent he will 
generally secure recognition in the great world ; 
but it is indispensable that he be a scholar and 
a man of culture. A mere business man in such 
a position is an absurdity like an impressionist 
painter at the head of a railroad corporation. 
We must still distinguish, however. The presi- 
dent of a university, while he must have execu- 
tive ability, may or may not be a skilled 
educator. The students under his administra- 
tion are in pursuit of knowledge. They have 
passed the disciplinary stage ; their general 
culture is henceforth their own affair. The 
head of a distinctively educational establishment, 
on the other hand, should be an educator, and as 
such ought to make his mark in the outside world, 
representing and interpreting the academic idea, 
while within the walls his criticism, inspiration, 
or direction should reach to every department 
and every individual. 

Let the line be sharply drawn, then, between 
college and university. Instead of trying to 
make inferior colleges into feeble universities, 
it might be well to convert here and there a so- 
called university into something really worthy to 
be called a college. An ill-endowed academy, 
instead of inflating itself with the pretensions of 
a "people's university," — the language has been 
soberly used in public — would better undertake 
to teach a few things modestly and thoroughly 
well. The " people " need no such " univer- 



EDucation 



131 



sity." What deserves that name is for no class, 
high or low ; it is democratic in the best sense. 
A sham is fit neither for the few nor for the 
many. Typewriting and the like, as business 
pursuits, will take care of themselves ; while in- 
struction in advanced subjects is already pro- 
vided for those who will work up to it. The 
true educator's motto is Non multa sed tnultum. 

The instruction of classes calls for competent 
scholarship, constantly new-fed with the world's 
best, for hard sense both in conception and in 
execution, for every grace and force of char- 
acter. Now and then, doubtless, an instructor 
falls a victim to the merciless persecution of his 
pupils. Barbarous and wicked on the student's 
part as this persecution is, it belongs to the great 
process of evolution. The fittest survive ; it is 
the unfit who perish. Whoso has not the per- 
sonal force to be master must go to the wall ; 
his place is on the other side of it. But of those 
who hold their positions, every college graduate 
knows that a large proportion are conspicuously 
lacking in one or another of the qualifications 
that command respect. Not to speak of callow 
tutors, chosen for their record in the marking- 
book, who does not recall a Dryasdust, a tyrant, 
a blusterer, an easy-going incompetent, an in- 
carnation of mediocrity, or a cold-blooded ver- 
tebrate in the professor's chair ? It is true that 
instructors are and must be human ; but neither 
they nor those who appoint them seem to ap- 



132 



Gbe 3Law of Service 



preciate the dignity, the splendid opportunity, 
the inspiring demands of their high office. 

A natural consequence of incapacity or indif- 
ference among college instructors is the low 
standard of requirement for admission to college 
classes, and especially for retention in them. 
Another is the belittlement that goes with petty 
marking systems, happily not everywhere so 
petty as they used to be. Another, the anti- 
quated but not obsolete fashion of cramping 
preparatory work by specific requirements which 
can be, almost need to be, and generally are, 
crammed for. Instead of knowing a language 
to some practical purpose, — a knowledge which 
may be fairly required and easily tested — the 
candidate is to know certain portions of certain 
authors ; and old examination papers are sent 
out, which he and his teachers may be found 
laboring over, that he may be " up," forsooth, 
on the particular kind of questions he is likely to 
get. Another outstanding fault is the frivolity 
and extravagance, not to say worse, of academic 
life. Instead of a preparation for service in the 
world, it is to be feared that many a young 
man's college career is a preparation for amus- 
ing himself at the world's expense. Where the 
expenditure of the average undergraduate would 
support a self-respecting family in comfort and 
refinement, there is not only waste of money 
and waste of opportunity, but a positive training 
for self-indulgence and the ungenerous way of 



Education 



133 



living. Unquestionably college is no place for 
prigs or Uriah Heeps. The pale dyspeptic of 
old, burner of midnight oil, who scorned de- 
lights as well as lived laborious days, if he has 
disappeared is not to be regretted. A masculine 
freedom and courage and a boyish gayety are 
proper to the student ; but dissipated " dudes," 
lawless rowdies spared by a partial police, reck- 
less sporting men in college colors, idlers ambi- 
tious to shine at the whist-table or caper nimbly 
in the tennis-court, can well be spared. The 
word " student " is an open sesame to the good 
graces of the public, partly because the better 
part of the public are in sympathy with aca- 
demic aims, and partly because philistinism sees 
its own ideals expressed in dashing style by the 
worse class of undergraduates. These take ad- 
vantage of their popularity and immunity to 
abuse the indulgence of easy-going superiors 
and bring discredit on the college world. 

Everywhere, instructors hold the key of the 
situation. Students as a class will not take 
their business more seriously than their teachers 
do ; but they are as quick to recognize genuine 
worth and good sense in those who are set over 
them as they are to despise insincerity and to 
ridicule pedantic feebleness. Manhood in the 
teacher finds generous response of manhood in 
the taught. The same overrunning energy 
which gets vent in lawless excesses would ex- 
pend itself usefully in the fascinating and inspir- 



134 



Sbe Xaw of Service 



ing work of the scholar, if it were competently 
managed. Vacations are too long ; recreations, 
so-called, are too wasteful, and too little of 
genuine worthy achievement is expected of all 
concerned. The cool, dry atmosphere of the 
typical college professor's mind has its advan- 
tages, but dust and cobwebs need not accumu- 
late in it, nor ice be suffered to form. Preoccu- 
pied with his own studies, contemptuous of 
youth as callow as his own was once, and impa- 
tient of a routine his own indifference has made 
dull, he may easily " freeze the genial current of 
the soul," and discourage aspiration more gener- 
ous than he ever knew. Narrowed in sympathy 
and alienated from vital interests by what he is 
pleased to regard as his own intellectual breadth, 
he may fail to teach his subject as related to 
life, both by its proper significance and by its 
bearing on the development of the pupil. If he 
does not grasp the import and feel the power of 
the central Law which makes life worth living, 
has no clearly conceived ideal of life or a 
dwarfed and unsymmetrical one, and is absent- 
mindedly wrapped up in his chosen pursuits, he 
can neither feel himself nor make his disciple 
feel the profoundest unity of all knowledge, the 
most vital significance of every science, the in- 
most charm of art and letters. Enthusiasm is 
his first duty ; not the zeal of a specialist, but 
the devotion of a man. Failing in this, no 
wonder he fails in so much else. 



Education 



135 



If the Law of Service were accepted as the 
law of culture, and all training viewed as prepa- 
ration for service, we might fairly expect the 
whole business to be taken far more seriously 
than it is. Serious men adapt means to ends ; 
hence it would follow that stupidities too trivial 
in themselves for these pages, yet fruitful of 
grave evils, would be censured and abolished. 
Technical work, as of editing Greek texts, com- 
piling manuals, and writing monographs, would 
be done by university or other specialists, sub- 
ject often to the invaluable criticism of practical 
educators. The preparation, for instance, of a 
grammar or dictionary for school use calls for 
two distinct qualifications. One is profound 
knowledge of the subject-matter, and this de- 
mands the concentrated energies of the pro- 
fessional scholar. The other is the practical 
experience and judgment of the instructor, and 
his cultivated sense of form and fitness, with- 
out which a monument of scholarship may be a 
dismal failure for school purposes. But the 
attempt to combine the functions of author and 
educator, while robbing the instructor's time 
for the drudgery of book-making, opens the 
way for slipshod and unsuitable work. It is for 
the teacher to know what he wants, and, 
whether indirectly by criticism and choice or 
directly by delegating the work, to get it. He 
must not belittle his office by acknowledging 
that any work is greater than his of making men 



136 Zhc Xaw of Service 



and women for use in the world, nor betray his 
trust by making this secondary to any other. 
He must be above the present scramble for 
wealth, content with an adequate support, and 
remembering that commerce has no unit of 
value for his work, which is incommensurable 
with the almighty dollar. He must pity, not 
emulate, the poor ambition of Cicero for posthu- 
mous praise, well pleased if his life may have its 
record in the well-being of those who shall come 
after. 

We accept the advice of " practical " critics 
and innovators, only reserving the right of 
definition, and will be as radical and fearless 
as they in the endeavor to bring things to pass ; 
but what makes us thus radical also makes us 
conservative of the good old tradition of liberal 
culture, with its " humanities" and its unworld- 
liness. Informing this with a more intelligent 
and conscious purpose of beneficence, and 
applying business sagacity to the working out of 
that purpose, we would rescue the schools out 
of the hands of the philistines, and vindicate 
their right to exist for their own legitimate ends. 
Agassiz had " no time to make money " ; and to 
that happy scholar doubtless this was no hard- 
ship. They whose exalted office it is to make 
men need not complain if they lack time or 
strength to make anything else whatever. 

No special mention has been made in this 
chapter of the education of women. The ques- 



Education 



137 



tion is practically settled. The quiet but irre- 
sistible movement of the last two or three 
decades will go on until, very possibly, more 
women than men will be engaged in academic 
work. For years to come, colleges for women 
will be increasingly liable to some of the same 
errors into which other colleges are prone to 
fall. If there is any force in the critical sugges- 
tions here made, they apply in the one field as 
well as in the other. It should not be necessary 
to prove to any intelligent reader of this book 
that the distinction of sex has nothing to do with 
its arguments and conclusions. The Law of 
Service knows no sex, and the same is true of 
the great principles of education. The awakened 
intellect of woman, and the development among 
men of reasonable views concerning her, give 
promise that whatever is special in the problem 
of her education will be intelligently studied, 
and will not receive undue emphasis. The 
logical and natural outcome of the movement 
now going on will be, we may believe, such a 
development of " co-education " that the awk- 
ward term itself will by and by cause a smile. 
Looking at the whole educational field, this 
wonderful but easy and natural progress seems 
by far the most encouraging omen it presents. 
Speaking numerically, it is significant as affect- 
ing, directly or indirectly, one half of the youth 
of English-speaking countries. Conversion to 
right views and practice concerning a matter so 



138 Gbe Xaw of Service 



important implies a liberalizing and quickening 
in whose benefits all education cannot fail to 
share. The effect of this revolutionary move- 
ment in the educational world itself can be 
partly foreseen but cannot be computed. In its 
bearing upon the general welfare in countless 
ways and especially through the reconstruction 
of the home, it promises ultimate results of the 
sublimest moment. Here, as elsewhere, if we 
can get the Law of Service intelligently obeyed, 
there is no fear. 

The progress of the kingdom of heaven is a 
process of education ; it is an instruction and 
a discipline, an inspiration to service and through 
service. Beneficent manhood is the essential 
thing, and all the world's runnings to and fro 
have their significance in relation to that. It 
is the exalted office of the educator, standing 
among men for the doctrine that the life is 
more than meat and the body than raiment, 
to contribute by his daily toil to the building 
up of universal manhood. The Almighty has 
no better work for himself — it is good enough 
work for the most gifted of his creatures. 




XXII. 
THE DIFFERENCE. 

T N dealing with applications of the Law of 
■ Service we have in some chapters made 
little express reference to the law itself. Here, 
as often in the conduct of life, the underlying 
principle is not conspicuous at the surface. 
Nevertheless, the enforcement of its main con- 
tention is necessary alike to the unity and to the 
usefulness of this book. If the convictions out 
of which the book has grown are well founded, 
it is much more important to win intelligent and 
hearty assent to its central doctrine than to set 
forth, however clearly and forcibly, any specific 
applications. It remains, in taking leave of the 
subject, to emphasize what we have tried to 
teach by contrasting it again with the theory 
and practice of the orthodox. 

The prevailing theory is in effect that we 
must " be good " ; must cultivate this, that, and 
the other Christian grace ; must foster religious 
sentiment and the expression of it, and secure 
the conversion of sinners, who are to become 
139 



140 



XZbe %aw of Service 



like us, only more devout. This theory, if we 
may judge by its average expression, has much 
to do with the overcoming our own sins, but 
comparatively little with any aggressive action 
in the great world, especially in so-called " secu- 
lar" matters. To do it justice, we may grant 
that in many minds it contemplates the ultimate 
leavening of all human institutions with the 
spirit of Christianity ; but in justice we must 
also say that to the average mind, apparently, 
that consummation is in some indefinite far 
future, hardly more vividly conceived, if less 
remote, than the "day of judgment." 

The theory of this book is that in obedience 
to the all-inclusive Law of Love we must do 
One Thing— we must bend all our powers to do 
the will of God in the service of his creatures, 
and that without qualification or reserve. We 
are to aim not at subjective states or experiences, 
except as these condition our usefulness, but at 
objective results. We are to make this world, 
the only one with which we are acquainted, a 
better world. Whatever we do or abstain from 
doing, we are to have this constantly and con- 
sciously in view, content to believe that accord- 
ing as we thus live in singleness of heart, 
harmonizing our conduct and aims with the will 
of God, we shall receive according to natural 
law — another name for that will— whatever gifts, 
graces, and experiences it may be best for us to 
have ; accounting self-absorption a near neigh- 



£be Difference 



141 



bor to selfishness, a fault to be shunned rather 
than a virtue to be cultivated. According to 
this view, we are to repudiate the distinction 
between sacred and secular, as applied to the 
legitimate concerns of life. In trade or politics, 
in art or athletics, in literature and scholarship, 
in digging ditches or dealing in stocks or keep- 
ing hotels we are to be as devout as in preaching 
sermons, singing psalms, or smoothing the pillow 
of the dying. Walking softly everywhere, awed 
by the divine presence and the vast issues of 
life, we are yet to keep clear of the morbid and 
hysterical, like the coolest man of business in 
his office or the healthiest boy at his games. 

In the too common practice of the orthodox, 
men distinguish between the service of God, the 
service of mankind — service of other creatures 
being disregarded — and the service of them- 
selves. In the service of God they are religious, 
often with a very bad grace. They build hand- 
some temples, uptown, go with more or less 
emotion through forms of worship, pray and 
meditate by themselves. In the service of man- 
kind they give a trifle for evangelization — this is 
religious service ; they give another trifle for 
charity — this is philanthropy ; neglecting to 
think and to act independently about public 
affairs, they follow the lead of the partisan poli- 
ticians, and leave municipal management to 
bosses, and sociology to cranks and college pro- 
fessors — this all belongs to the " secular " part 



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Gbe Haw of Service 



of life. In the service of themselves they are 
devoted and diligent, single-hearted enough if 
not far-seeing. Not what they need, whether 
for health or efficiency, but what they want, and 
as much as they can get — this they must have. 
Economy in expenditure is from worldly pru- 
dence, not for the common weal. Giving, 
whether of money or of personal effort, is not 
the business of life, but a concession ; the ques- 
tion, not how much is possible, but how little is 
sufficient. Self-indulgence beyond any rational 
use is not only shameless but self-complacent ; 
not discreditable, but eminently respectable. 

In practice under the law we have set forth, 
one serves God, and himself, by serving his 
fellow-creatures. Worship, like the expression 
of filial affection, is natural and spontaneous. 
Its public forms, like the decorous customs of 
the household, are determined by fitness and 
usefulness. Its architecture and accessories are 
i not according to the wealth and social position of 
the worshipper, but, again, are for fitness and 
use, and are limited by the economies of service. 
Service of fellow-creatures is the one business 
and study of life ; service of self is incidental or 
indirect. Giving of mind, body, and estate is 
the normal process, the daily joy of life ; inabil- 
ity or failure to give is its chief distress. Self- 
indulgence beyond rational use is disreputable ; 
private display is both ungenerous and vulgar. 
Public spirit, with all that it implies, is the natural 



Cbe Difference 



143 



atmosphere of the life of service ; public mis- 
fortune a personal grief, public disgrace a per- 
sonal shame. The welfare of the Nation, not 
as a jealous competing neighbor of other states, 
but as a generous and beneficent member of the 
Commonwealth of Nations, is the glory and 
pride of the Christian citizen. 

The world is grievously afflicted. The 
church has doctored the symptoms of its ail- 
ment empirically, in an intermittent and emo- 
tional way. According to the Law of Service 
we are to deal scientifically with the disease 
itself by radical and constitutional treatment. 
The springs of human life must be cleansed, its 
processes made normal and vigorous, its activi- 
ties reformed. We have reckoned on selfishness 
as the motive of human action ; let us have the 
faith and courage to reckon on love. Self- 
seeking competition is war, with all its miseries ; 
generous service is peace with all its blessings. 



THE END 



